Camp-Fire Vignettes (Chapter 1: The Meager)
by The Geordie Lass
Summary: A series of short-medium length snapshots of what is happening behind the scenes between battles with Ramza & co. This has elements of a novelisation, as it follows the canon story, however, it doesn't just retell it. Instead, it's an exploration of the characters and their relationships, with a little back-story thrown in. T-rated for mild swearing and passing mentions of sex.
1. Chapter 1 - Lord Dycedarg, Writ Small

When I recently unearthed my old PSP, specifically to replay this game (for the umpteenth time), as usual I wished that the characters got more development. So I finally got round to trying my hand at it. I'm not going to rehash the battles themselves, and I won't transcribe cut-scenes (though I might occasionally have characters discuss what occurred in a cut-scene). Hopefully, this will allow me to develop the characters and their relationships, though it should also let me flesh things out in new and interesting ways, too. (Fingers crossed!)

I thought I was coming stupidly late to this party, considering the age of the game, then I mentioned it in passing to a friend who said he had it on his iPhone, so maybe not! (I had no idea about the iOS version, now I'm rather indignant I can't get it on Android.)

I've called it "Camp-fire Vignettes" because this is snapshots of what is happening behind the scenes between those little dots on the map, often while encamped. However, not all are at a camp-fire, and some will take place on the dots (i.e. in towns), not between them.

Some of the idiosyncrasies of the play-through that I was doing when I started writing this show up in a minor way – e.g. I decided, on a whim, that all my generics would be girls this time - but the idiosyncrasies aren't of major significance.

Lastly, I'd really appreciate any **constructive** criticism/reviews/comments – I appreciate all of them and I always try to ensure I respond individually to each one.

* * *

**Vignette 1 - Lord Dycedarg, Writ Small**

_The Woods on the Edge of Mandalia Plain, 12 Miles from Gariland. Early evening._

Ramza was nominally in charge of the expedition, but he hadn't bothered to give orders about the tasks in camp, he'd left that to Delita. Well he _had _been named as Ramza's second in command, after all, and he was far better at fine detail than Ramza. The six of them had set up tents, a large one for the four girls, a smaller one for the two boys. Ramza worked alongside the rest - he could be lax about giving orders, but he always tried to pull his weight, otherwise.

"It's a shame Tristan was killed, of course, but since it wasn't permanent, I'm glad that it gave me a chance to join you, after the fact, at least." Hildegarde said to Samantha, as they prepared some trout they had caught in the local stream.

Samantha only made a small noise in response - she was still brooding about the fight they'd got into that morning in Gariland. She'd been acting as team chemist and her lack of ability to use Phoenix Downs had almost proved permanently fatal to her friend, Tristan. If they hadn't managed to get the boy back to the Akademy in time to be Raised, Samantha would have never have forgiven herself – she still hadn't forgiven herself for her lack of foresight. She kept asking herself what had possessed her to concentrate on mastering the use of Antidotes and not something that, used quickly, could _reverse death? _She vowed to herself that by the time she was next assigned as the team's official chemist she would have mastered the skill.

"What bothers me," Delita said to Ramza, from where he was building their camp-fire, nearby, "is what they were thinking, attacking half-a-dozen armed people in the middle of the city. I know we were ordered to patrol the slums to search for them but, still, they could have run – supposedly the Brigade's people aren't stupid – logically, they should have seen we weren't exactly easy pickings and legged it. Something's off about that."

Ramza gave his friend a look that was half-amused and half-exasperated.

"You always imagine there's intrigue going on, Delita. As you said, we were well dressed and walking through the slums - they probably imagined that we _were_ easy pickings - that the weapons were just for show; lots of court dandies wear a sword without having the first clue how to use it, after all. I imagine it was exactly what the man said - "wee moppets" with brimming purses, so they decided to take the risk. They were brigands, after all, as well as fools, as it turned out."

"You're probably right, I'm just jumpy, with the political situation as it is." Delita said.

"What's the point in us bothering about the politics? We're a bunch of sixteen-year-old cadets - no-one's going to let us play those games. We're just going to be stuck up on the battlements of Eagrose Castle for a few weeks, then we go back to the Akademy. That fight in the back alleys of Garliand is more excitement than we'll ever see once we're home. If you ask me, it's all going to be terribly dull and if anyone is politicking, it's not as though we'll even get to hear about it." Ramza said.

Delita sighed; Ramza frustrated him sometimes.

"You're probably right. But... I know I keep saying it, but you have the family connections to actually make a difference, it's a crime that you aren't more politically-minded."

Ramza rolled his eyes at his friend.

"You're intrigued enough by it for both of us. I'll tell you what. When we're both too old to swing a sword, I'll start dabbling in politics and you can be my éminence grise, sorry, _political advisor_, much in the way Dycedarg is for the Duke. Only, given that neither of us is particularly important, it will have to be on a rather less ambitious scale."

Both studied strategy, tactics, military and political history, but whereas Delita's bent was definitely political, Ramza dreamt of having the military talents to live up to his family name. With the towering martial reputations of his father and brothers, it was a lot to ask of himself; he hoped fervently that he wouldn't fail... and feared terribly that he would.

"Lord Dycedarg, writ small! Now I have my life's ambition all worked out." Delita muttered.

"What do you mean by that?" Ramza asked.

Although his tone challenged Delita, he was genuinely confused as to exactly what the other boy _could_ mean. His father's will had made Dycedarg guardian to the two Heirals as well as his youngest brother and sister, and while Dycedarg was usually a stern and strict guardian he wasn't usually unreasonable. Ramza had thought that Delita had the same respect for Dycedarg as he had.

"Nothing. I'm not deriding your noble Lord Brother, so don't sound so annoyed. Perhaps I just think that one day I'd like to change my false nobleman's garb for the robes of someone with _real_ power." Delita shook his head hard, as if to clear it.

"Oh, lets forget it, we're out on our own, totally independent for a couple of days until we get to Eagrose. I don't know why we're even getting into a dispute." Delita added.

Always happy to make peace, Ramza got to his feet, raising his voice a little.

"Why don't we all go for a swim – it's warm for the time of year and I noticed a bit of a pool just down from where we caught the fish."

Delita and the girls just looked at him, incredulous.

"Nope." Juliana eventually said in a very definite tone. "I know you tend to be a bit clueless about girls, Ramza, but the four of us are definitely _not _about to casually strip to our shifts in front of you two and go for a dip."

"You don't know what you're missing." Delita said to her, a wide suggestive smile on his face.

Juliana gave him an assessing look. He wasn't necessarily the better looking of the two boys - that was up for debate - but he was both taller and broader through chest and shoulders. Ramza still had the build of a skinny teenaged boy whereas Delita, though younger by a few months had already begun to fill out, giving him more of a man's frame.

"Maybe if it was just the two of us..." She said with an arch smile, then blushed and ducked her head. The two had been flirting for months - Ramza wasn't sure if they'd ever done more than flirt and Delita was generally rather vague on the subject, when asked.

"Fine, fine." Ramza said, still a little flustered. "Do you four want to swim? If you do, I promise Delita and I will wait and have a swim after you've finished." Most of the girls said they would but Samantha just shook her head without speaking. Ramza gave her a long look, head tilted slightly to one side, then hunkered down next to her, speaking low.

"The important part is that we were still in time to get him revived and you are determined not to let it happen again. Try to stop thinking about it so much, Sam. We make mistakes then we have to move on and make sure that we don't make the same ones again."

It was more than just the Beoulve name that had placed Ramza in charge of this little squad - he had the confidence and many of the innate skills to be a good leader.

"I know you're right, but we were so close to losing him forever - a few more seconds, even..." Samantha shivered.

Ramza put a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder; he could sympathise - their first ever fight involving real deaths, today, had shaken him too.

"But we didn't. Go on. Go for a swim with the others. It'll be fun – help you take your mind off it."

* * *

Ramza dreamed he was back at his father's death-bed that night. It was months since that had happened and he wasn't sure what had prompted it, almost three years after the actual event. He woke in a cold sweat and stumbled out of the tent. Delita should have been on watch, but he was nowhere to be seen. Ramza sat staring into the fire, which was very low. He heard a twig snap behind him, and Delita came up.

"Where have you been?" Ramza asked sharply.

"Collecting more firewood." Delita said, dumping an armload of branches.

"Oh... Sorry." Ramza pushed his mop of hair out of his eyes. "I didn't mean to make it sound like an accusation."

"You were put in charge, you have the right to question your subordinates." Was there a hint of stiffness in Delita's voice? No, surely not; that would be silly, wouldn't it?

"You know it isn't like that - I don't think of you as my 'subordinate'. I'm sorry. I dreamed about my father dying again; I'm just a bit on edge. Look, I won't get back to sleep, so I may as well take over the watch early if you want to get to bed." He'd noticed Delita try to hide a couple of yawns while he'd been speaking.

Delita leaned forward to put another branch on the fire and Ramza heard a hissing noise as if water had fallen to the stones that they had used to bake the trout.

"Is your hair _dripping_?"

"Er... well, yes. I'm sorry... You weren't wrong to question me. Juliana invited me to go for a moonlight swim with her... I know I shouldn't have, not while I was supposed to be on watch, and I apologise."

Ramza just shook his head. He knew he could be a little prudish, but he had been made conscious of his illegitimacy, early in life, and that led him to be rather more conservative about sexual matters than some of his friends. It was a heavy stigma in their society and he was very aware that he never wanted to burden a child with it himself. Especially as he was unlikely to ever have the influence his father had had, which meant he wouldn't have the highly unorthodox option of having papers drawn up to be signed by the king, legitimating his bastard children. Staying chaste was better... if more frustrating.

"Hey don't look at me like that. _She_ asked _me_..." Delita said, sounding defensive, now.

"Don't worry about it." Ramza said, a little stiffly. "Like I said, I can take over the watch now."

He was far closer to Delita than to his own, much older, brothers but, like close siblings, they weren't without their differences. Ramza thought about that while he watched Delita head for their tent.

* * *

Author's Note:

Delita doesn't spring Athena-like from Zeus's head, as a consummate political schemer later in the game. I didn't pick up on it during my very first play-through, but in Chapter 1 he always knows more about what's going on in the world, including who the political participants are, than the other cadets, e.g. he knows who all the major players in the Corpse Brigade are, while Ramza's pretty much clueless. Anyway, I hope I didn't lay the "Delita's a political animal" on too thick. I'll try not to be too heavy-handed with it, in future.

I originally tried to emulate the game's Olde English dialogue... and failed. I want them to sound like intelligent sixteen-year-olds, not crusty sixty-year-olds. So I copped out.


	2. Chapter 2 - Judging Too Harshly?

**Vignette 2 - Judging Too Harshly?**

_Between Mandalia Plain and Eagrose, shortly before full-dark_

Delita watched his friend and thought, with some relief, that Ramza had finally reached the end of his tether.

"No Argath! No matter how much you argue, we will _not_ be pressing on tonight. I am not travelling in the dark when we could be attacked and never see it coming. We're still about three hours from Eagrose. We'll leave at first light and be there by mid-morning, at worst." Ramza held up a hand, when the other young man made as if to speak again. Ramza, often so self-effacing, suddenly had all the commanding presence that Lord Ramza Beoulve, third son of the Earl of Eagrose was supposed to have. In this case, Delita approved of that, wholeheartedly.

"I said _no_! We are not putting ourselves and the rest of the team in jeopardy because _you_ think you can get an army from my brothers, to ride out at your back, this very night. I'll make sure that they listen to what you have to say but I'm sorry to tell you that it will be _they_ that decide how to proceed in this, not _you_. Besides, a few hours, which will hopefully allow us to stay untroubled by bandits and fiendish creatures, will not make much difference. Ten-to-one, Dycedarg will already know all about it when we get there and he, the Duke and Zalbaag will have made plans."

Dycedarg's ability to know about _everything_, very soon after had happened, sometimes seemed uncanny. Delita saw Argath open his mouth again, even as he was wondering for the umpteenth time just how many spies Dycedarg must have, to be able to do that. The stubborn look on Argath's face said this was not going to be acquiescence. Ramza jumped in again – yes he really had lost any semblance of patience with Argath's ridiculous posturing and demands.

"No, I have listened to you maunder on about this for nigh-on half an hour, I will _not_ listen to another word!"

Ramza stalked off, heading further away from the road and, after a moment, Delita followed him. He found Ramza leaning against a tree, inspecting the silhouette of the toe of one boot in the near-dark, as if it fascinated him.

"Was I too harsh?" He asked. Delita shrugged.

"No... well perhaps a _little_; he's had a hard day, after all. I can't fault you, though - it did have to be said."

Delita was just glad that the argument, which had seemed interminable, had finally been ended. He'd have had a lot less patience than Ramza with Argath.

"Who does he think he is, telling me what we must and mustn't do for him?" Ramza asked.

Delita knew Ramza had spent the last couple of days trying terribly hard to be the perfect Cadet-Captain. Something about the incongruence of that, and the slightly petulant indignation of that last question made him smile. Thinking more about Argath made his smile drop quickly.

"There's something not quite... right about him, I admit." Delita said, after a moment's consideration. "He's so _intense_ about everything. I mean, he's ambitious, that's as obvious as the noonday sun and, I'd guess, he's hitched his wagon so tightly to the Marquis that he thinks he has nothing left, if anything happens to the man.

"Be careful of him; if he thinks his ambitions can be more easily realised with Beoulve rather than Elmdore help, you'll find him a difficult one to be rid of, I imagine."

Delita's voice might be cool, but he had his own ambitions, so he could, sort of, sympathise with Argath. However, his attachment to the Beoulve family was genuine - his affection for its youngest two members was as strong, more or less, as that for his sister; he would never just use them to gain what he wanted... though, if an opportunity presented itself, that Lords Zalbaag or Dycedarg could help him with... so maybe, he wasn't _so_ different from Argath, after all.

"I don't necessarily need to be "rid" of him, totally; he was handy in the fight today, after all. I just want him to calm down and back off a bit... Maybe I'm being unfair, maybe he's just very loyal to the Marquis." Ramza himself didn't sound entirely convinced of that.

"Perhaps." Delita's voice held no conviction.

"But you don't think it's likely do you?" Ramza asked.

"No." Delita didn't bother to elaborate, he'd stated his opinion already.

The stars were unusually bright that evening, which meant that there was just enough light for Delita to see Ramza's shrug, as he also said:

"Then, will you do me a favour and keep an eye on him, please? As you suggest, he may see befriending me as a way to try to gain favour with my brothers. I probably should do as you say and be careful around him."

"Of course. And don't worry about it, I would have kept an eye, anyway - there's something about him I just don't trust." Delita couldn't have said what, other than the other boy's over-eagerness, had prompted that reaction in him, but something about Argath just bothered him, niggling away at the back of his mind.

"We're being too hasty, I'm sure. We shouldn't judge him like this." Ramza said. Delita tried hard not to roll his eyes.

"We're being _realistic_, Ramza. If we're wrong, then we may find, in time, that we have another friend, one who we misjudged at first. If we're right, then he isn't someone who either of us should ever _fully_ trust. It's only sensible to be a little cautious... Anyway, let's go back."

Delita headed for the campfire, where a silence reigned. The other four cadets weren't looking at Argath and the silence was distinctly uncomfortable. Ramza trudged after his friend. He glanced at Argath and thought he could almost see waves of frustration coming off the boy.

"I'm sorry for my rudeness before, Argath, but you already lost several comrades today, as I understand it. I won't do _anything_ to increase the risk losing mine."

"I... understand... it's just very hard to feel so helpless." Argath replied, in a sullen monotone.

"Yes, it must be." Ramza could afford to put a little sympathy into his tone, now the argument had been won, but he didn't feel inclined to give too much.

There was none of the cheerfulness of the previous night, which had been rather fun, especially once Samantha had roused herself, a little, from her black mood. Tonight, they set up the tents, lit a fire and had a meagre supper, before splitting watches and retiring almost immediately.

* * *

Author's Note:

I'm failing in my personal goals for this piece - from the start, I couldn't maintain the Olde English - now, I wanted to justify Argath saying "Are we not friends?" to Ramza during the fight with Delita, after Tietra's kidnapped. However, I can't make myself make Ramza (or Delita) like him. Maybe Argath will just have to be a self-deluding idiot about it, instead, or maybe that comment's meant sarcastically.


	3. Chapter 3 - An Evening's Picnic

The game has the team run straight off to Dorter at this point, but I wanted a reason for Ramza and Delita to interact with their sisters for a bit...

* * *

**Vignette 3 - An Evening's Picnic**

_Beoulve Mansion, Eagrose, early evening_

"Gods rot him, I don't know if I can tolerate him all the way to Dorter and back!" Ramza said as he opened Delita's door.

That afternoon, after Zalbaag had 'not' given them their assignment, the boys had dashed off. However, the rest of the team had already been given the afternoon off and had headed into Eagrose to explore. It had taken too long to round them up. By the time all seven of them were ready to go, it was already evening. All they could do was double-check that everything was prepared for an immediate departure at first light.

_Again_ Ramza had found himself confronted by Argath demanding that they risk themselves, travelling by night. This time, Ramza had simply told him he wasn't prepared to discuss it. He'd headed to Delita's room, wanting to vent his frustrations. Tietra and Alma were there before him and his clouded face suddenly became sunny.

"So, you two, is it a banquet tonight?" His brother Dycedarg frequently entertained his political allies and 'friendly' rivals.

"No, Dycedarg's up at the main castle with the Duke, and Zalbaag left straight after we saw him, so the four of us are having a picnic." Alma said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Picnic? It started raining a short while ago and besides, it'll be full dark very soon." Ramza said.

"Which is why it's all laid out in the nursery." Tietra said with a sweet smile. "_Please_, it'll be fun."

"I haven't been up to the nursery since you two moved out a couple of years ago. I suppose it might be fun, at that." Ramza said, returning Tietra's smile.

"And don't worry, I've arranged to have a good dinner served to your friends." Alma said.

"My, my, just fifteen and already the consummate Lady of the House." Ramza said, with a grin, earning himself a glare.

"Well at least _I_ actually bother to think about the practicalities of life." Alma replied, waspishly. Ramza totally ignored her, as only a brother could.

"Since it's the nursery, shall we make it a race then?" He said, grinning at Delita.

Both boys ran out of the room as if the hounds of hell were on their heels, Delita grabbing at Ramza and shoving himself in front as they reached the door.

The two girls watched in bemusement; before they'd hit their teens, racing to get wherever they were going had been a usual pastime for the two boys, but it had been some time since they'd done it and it was a little strange to see what were, to all intents and purposes, two fully-grown men jostling in the doorway like a pair of naughty children.

"Well at least we know they'll never really change." Alma said to Tietra, rolling her eyes. The girls picked up their skirts and followed at a more sedate pace.

* * *

"So... tell me _all_ about school." Delita said in a deceptively casual tone to his sister. He was lounging on the floor and popped the last piece of a venison pasty into his mouth, as he finished speaking. The other three all suddenly realised that what Tietra had said about it, earlier in the day, hadn't fooled her brother.

"What about it? I go, I try to be good at my lessons, I come home, I do my homework." Even to her own ears, Tietra sounded defensive.

Alma glanced, slightly apprehensively, at Ramza from where she sat, perched side-saddle, on the old rocking-chocobo. She and Tietra had planned to have a nice evening with the brothers they saw so seldom - this wasn't part of that plan. Ramza, she knew, would be as keen as she to smooth things over between the other two, if he got that chance.

"And you'd tell me if you weren't happy, _of course_, wouldn't you?" Even if there was sarcasm in Delita's tone, there was no doubt about the protective brother predominating.

"If there was anything to tell, I would." Tietra said, almost primly.

Delita grunted at that.

"Rubbish! You always did keep your own counsel too much when you were unhappy."

"I'm _not _unhappy... I'm _not_! I haven't seen you in months, so why are you being so grumpy? I said it's fine, it _is!_" Tietra said.

Delita glanced at Alma, then subsided when he saw that her glare was even fiercer than Tietra's.

"When did the old instruments get moved up here?" Ramza asked, trying to break the tension between the other pair of siblings. He went over, opened the lid of the clavichord and played a few arpeggios.

"Lord Dycedarg got us a new harpsichord to replace this as well as a full-sized harp." Tietra said, coming over with a grateful smile, placing her hand on the clavichord's case. She was very glad to have a reason to escape her brother's glower.

"So these got relegated to the nursery? Well, I suppose if Dycedarg ever marries again and has children, this time, it would make sense." Dycedarg was so much older than his two half-siblings that he'd been married around the time that Ramza had been born. Unfortunately, he'd been widowed shortly after Alma's birth, eleven months later.

"Even if Dycedarg doesn't, Zalbaag might get married. We could be bridesmaids, Tietra, wouldn't that be lovely?" Alma said, enthusiastically picking up on what Ramza had thought of as a throwaway comment. The boys looked at the girls uncomprehendingly.

"Are either of them even courting a particular woman?" Ramza asked, still perplexed.

"Not that I know of." Alma said. "Why are you looking like that? _You_ brought up our brother marrying, and truth to tell, it's past time that he did; Papa's been dead these three years past. Dycedarg has to have an heir, you know."

"Zalbaag's his heir." Ramza supposed _he _was also an heir... of sorts. Even after a royal decree, his and Alma's legitimacy was shaky, so it was probably best neither ever thought of themselves as potential heirs. Their distant cousins who, without Ramza, would be second and third in line to the title, would probably fight his ever inheriting.

"Well one of them has to start producing legitimate children soon, for the sake of the succession." Alma said with finality.

"Suppose so." Ramza said, deeply uninterested.

"Try not to sound so fascinated, Brother dear." Alma replied sarcastically.

"Just grin and bear it, Ramza, the girls can't help it, they seem to just be naturally enthralled by the whole idea of love, marriage and babies these days." Delita said, rolling his eyes. "Strictly speaking, though, they have a point. A strong noble house is a one with a secure line of succession. Three unmarried brothers isn't the way of stability for House Beoulve."

"Well I'll arrange my wedding for this summer, shall I? Of course, I don't have a prospective wife, unless Tietra wants to. You _did_ promise to marry me one day, when you were... seven, after all." He grinned at her.

Ramza had been rather taken with the tiny, dark little girl when she and Delita had first come to live with them. Gradually, the novelty had worn off and she's just become like a second sister, more or less. Tietra smiled at him, though she blushed slightly too.

"If it's all right with you, Ramza, I think that may be a promise I'll have to break."

"Since we're reliving our childhood in the nursery tonight, let's go out on the roof and look for shooting stars." Alma said, suddenly, though she glanced between her brother and Tietra.

"It's raining. Difficult to see the stars through clouds." Ramza said.

"Not any more." Alma said.

"The roof will still be wet." Delita put in.

"What happened to you two?" Alma asked, pursing her lips. "You actually sound like _adults_, and Tietra and I thought neither of you would ever grow up." Ramza ignored that but, throwing up the sash of the nearest window, he stuck his head out.

"Still fairly cloudy, overhead." He said. Alma looked genuinely disappointed. "We'll check again in half an hour." He added because he hated to see her upset, even over the silliest things.

Having let cool air into the room, they poked the fire and settled down to play a few parlour games, forgetting about searching for shooting stars or the earlier bickering.

After what felt like only a few minutes of telling all about what had happened in their lives since they had last seen each other a couple of months before, the boys suddenly realised it was approaching midnight and they were supposed to be leaving at first light. Each hugged his own sister, then the other's, and they went down to their rooms to get what sleep they could.

* * *

Still in the nursery, the two girls seemed almost reluctant to leave the trappings of childhood behind again.

"You shouldn't have lied to him, you know." Alma said quietly.

"You know how Delita is..." Tietra said with a heavy sigh.

"I didn't mean to Delita. I meant that you'd love to keep that promise you made when you were seven." Tietra blushed at that.

"That's rubbish, Alma, and you know it! Besides, even if that were true, I'm only fifteen and Ramza doesn't even think of me like that, and I couldn't marry into your family, even if I wanted to... which I _don't_, and your brothers would throw fits and, well, it's not like I even _want_ to!" Alma grinned at Tietra's babbling.

"Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?"

"Oh _shut up,_ Alma! I'm just _tired_... I'm going to bed!"

As Alma watched her friend leave the room, her grin turned into a thoughtful expression.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

What portrayal of the relationships between these four there _is_, in the game, is a bit too idealised for my taste. They're a group of four teenagers who've been brought up as siblings, so for me, they're close, but they also need to bicker and wind each other up. In short, _act_ like brothers and sisters.

For information, Dycedarg's brief arranged marriage was very unhappy. There was fault on both sides – it was a good match, socially and politically (she was a second cousin to the King), so Dycedarg went ahead with it, but he didn't really want to be married so young and wasn't particularly attracted to her. She found him cold and felt he made no effort to make the marriage work, hence after a few months of unsuccessfully trying to gain some sign of affection from him she sought consolation with another man. She died, after a brief illness, just a few weeks after their first anniversary, about a month after Dycedarg discovered that she had been unfaithful and that the child she was carrying probably wasn't his. Suspicious fungi appeared on her grave some weeks later...

That's my take on a small piece of Dycedarg's past, anyway. I couldn't bring any of that into the actual vignette, though, because none of these four know anything about that.

My very last comment (I promise) - I know that the game calls their home in Eagrose the "Beoulve Manse", but since a "Manse" is the house provided for a Presbyterian Minister by the Church of Scotland, calling it that that bugs me. I lived in Scotland for a number of years, so I'm very aware of what a Manse actually is and it chimed as an odd, dissonant note for me, from the first time I saw it in the game. Hence I decided to call it the "Beoulve Mansion" instead.


	4. Chapter 4 - Argath's Ambitions

**Vignette 4 - Argath's Ambitions**

_Mandalia Plain, early evening_

Just before dark, they had been set upon by a group of fiendish red panthers and goblins. Having taken injuries, they'd been forced to set up camp not a hundred yards from where they had fought and Ramza thought he could smell blood as they sat around the fire. Then he realised that, of course, he could and it was his own, which had earlier soaked his sleeve and hadn't yet fully dried.

He was sipping a Potion as he munched on his evening's dried rations, and was watching the gash on his arm gradually close as he did. Observing the rapid healing process when drinking a Potion had always interested him. Delita called it a morbid fascination.

This not his first Potion of the evening, though and he suddenly remembered how he'd got the previous one.

"Argath, thank-you for passing me the Potion in the fight, I think it would have been a Phoenix Down for me, otherwise." He said. He still might not like or fully trust the other boy, but Argath had fought well and he'd helped more than just Ramza with a potion at an opportune moment.

"How did you end up as an apprentice in the Marquis' household, anyway? After what you said about your grandfather, yesterday, it must have been quite an achievement to gain a place in the retinue of your Province's liege lord." Ramza wanted very much for all seven of them to get along, but he didn't know much about Argath at all. Perhaps if he got to know the other boy better he might start to like him a little more. That had proved difficult so far, Argath tended to be rather withdrawn and made no effort to be friendly with the other knights apprentice.

Ramza would, therefore, have expected Argath's answer to be somewhat terse, so he was surprised when Argath actually spent a few minutes explaining how he had become one of Marquis Elmdore's squires. Perhaps he had misjudged Argath, perhaps the other boy was merely shy and only needed a little encouragement to come out of his shell.

"My mother, while she was dying, wrote a letter appealing to her cousins to take me in and help me along in life. They're influential people at the Limberry Court. They agreed to do it only if I would keep a certain... distance between myself and my father.

"My father has spent his life trying to clear my grandfather's name, but the evidence against my grandfather appears incontrovertible... to everyone _except_ my father. His actions have left the name of Thadalfus not only still in disgrace, but an even greater embarrassment to hold; he's seen not only as the son of a traitor but a quixotic fool for his inability to see the truth in front of his face!

"Anyway... my cousins found me a place as a page at the Marquis' court, when I was eleven, and I have worked hard, ever since, to dissociate myself from the stain on my family.

"Only Fovoham and Gallione have Military Akademies, you know. The Lesalian's usually send their children to one or the other, but in Limberry, like Lionel and Zeltennia, we still apprentice ourselves first as a page, then a squire in some more important knight or Noble's household. It was a great privilege to be given a place with the Marquis." Argath paused, sighing morosely.

"If anything happens to him, I lose what little advancement I've gained for myself over the past five years."

It was a story that seemed strange to Ramza; he had always idolised his father, he could not imagine trading a father's love and honour for position and a chance solely for one's own glory. It seemed like an ignoble way to behave and he'd begun to notice just how touchy Argath was about his oh-so-Noble background.

On changing watch around midnight, Delita and Ramza quietly discussed Argath's story. After a few minutes, Delita summed up the discussion:

"It may make me understand him a little better but it doesn't make me like or trust him any more than I did."

Ramza felt that those sentiments accurately reflected his own feelings about Argath and his tale, as well.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

I know that if they've just fought a battle on Mandalia Plain, at this point in the game, Argath wasn't involved, it was just a random one, but since I am loath to get too mired in game-mechanics, I can't think of a realistic reason why he and Delita would really just sit around navel-gazing while the others were being attacked.

Argath and potions comes about because, if you set "items" to Argath and Delita's second action slot, they do seem to be very efficient at handing them out. To the point where, even if no-one has Auto Potion set as a reaction ability, and you go in with what seems like an excessive amount of potions, you may well have run out of them before the end of the battle, as the two "guests" will often hand them out willy-nilly – they barely seem to do anything else (except kill-steal, of course!) The AI just likes to err on the side of caution, I guess. That isn't a bad trait, it's just a bit expensive, at this point in the game, when you aren't exactly flush with cash.


	5. Chapter 5 - The Farm Boy and the Bastard

**Vignette 5 - The Farm Boy and the Bastard**

_Just inside the western city gate of Gariland, early evening_

"We'll stop at our barracks tonight. I'll speak to the Headmaster and explain about you, Argath. Almost all of the other fourth-years are at Eagrose, so there should be no problem in finding you a bed in the dormitories." Ramza was speaking as they entered the city of Gariland's West Gate. He thought a moment.

"Actually, can you do that, Delita, please? I have that purse that Zalbaag gave me to improve the quality of our kit. He said what the Akademy supplies isn't adequate if we run into anything serious. I thought I'd see if any of the shops are still open. I did get us all better swords and daggers at Eagrose, but the lighter armour, that's made here, is more suited to our needs."

As Ramza stopped speaking he saw that Delita looked reluctant. His voice was unsure as he replied.

"I'll try, but you know how the Headmaster is with me, he refers to me as the "farm boy" even when I'm very obviously within earshot. The gods only know what he calls me when I'm not around!"

"The Headmaster's a prejudiced old man. So what if you're low-born?" Ramza saw Argath turn and study Delita with an indefinable expression.

"Says the boy whose father was the second most important man in Gallione."

"And my mother was every bit as low-born as yours." He lowered his voice. "I wish you'd stop being like this with me. Do I ever make you feel like you are less than me? If I ever have, I'm heartily sorry for it."

"Forget it." Delita's voice was clipped, but he hadn't answered the question, which made Ramza wonder. Did he unconsciously do things that emphasised his and Delita's difference in status?

"Hildegarde... no, hang on... Ophellia, can _you_ take Argath and speak to the Headmaster, please. Delita, since you don't want to be the one to speak to the Head, are you coming with me or going with them?"

Delita sighed, he supposed that at least Ramza had realised he was right about the Headmaster and changed the task to the fellow squire with the highest social rank. It would make things go smoother with the class-conscious Headmaster of the Akademy, that Ophellia, a Viscount's daughter, was the one who would be dealing with this. Even though Hildegarde's family were very wealthy, they held no titles - in fact they were _in trade_. He _hated_ that their world had to be like that!

"I'll come with you; if you really are buying enough kit for everyone, you'll need help to carry it." He said.

The party split up. Delita and Ramza headed down a quiet side street.

"_Do_ I make you feel like I think you are less than me?" Ramza had gripped Delita's shoulder and halted him.

"Not usually, and I know never deliberately, of course. Mostly it's just my tendency to be over-sensitive about the fact that I _am_ a farm boy, just... dressed up in a lordling's trappings." Delita began to turn away, but Ramza's grip on his shoulder tightened.

"Delita, you are one of the three people I love most in this world. Much as I respect, even love them, you are far more to me than either of my own brothers. _Promise_ me that if I ever do anything to insult or injure you, you'll tell me immediately." Ramza's voice was intense.

"All right, but no need to get so damned serious about it. I'll tell you from now on when you're being the arrogant young lord, okay?"

"Okay." Ramza grinned and the two young men hugged for a moment.

"I don't do it _that_ often, right?" Ramza's grin didn't fade.

"Never more than half a dozen times in a day." Delita said drily, though with a straight face. Ramza glanced at him, looked away, glanced back, and his smile dropped.

"You mean that! Delita, I..." He didn't know what to say. Delita sighed.

"'_Course_ I don't. Ramza, I just told you to stop being so serious. Now you're being an idiot as well as over-serious!"

"I'm not an_ idiot_!" Ramza punched Delita's shoulder.

"Not _all_ the time... Just most of it!" Delita grinned at his friend.

"I'll show you _idiot_!" Ramza grabbed Delita and, with some difficulty, got the taller boy in a headlock. Laughing and trading insults, the two young men progressed down the street, more wrestling than walking. As they reached the more populous areas of Gariland, they broke apart, straightened clothes and wandered along, still grinning broadly.

If any of the Akademy's masters found out that they had been seen scuffling together in public, they would be read a lecture about their immature behaviour bringing disrepute to the school, and they'd both heard that one a few times already. Neither much cared about the masters' opinions, but they also didn't want to have to be bothered with another recitation.

* * *

"Ramza, did you see Argath's face this evening when you said I was low-born?" Delita asked.

It was late and Ramza and Delita were in their beds in their shared room in the barracks. They'd blown their candles out, but it was stiflingly hot for Spring and neither could sleep, so they'd begun to talk in that slightly hushed tone that people use in the dark.

"Yes."

Delita waited for what felt like hours for more of a response.

"_And?_" He finally burst out.

"I was hoping you hadn't noticed. It was a strange look, certainly, but I was already having difficulty knowing what to make of him, so I decided that I'm not going to borrow trouble. Who knows, maybe it was nothing, maybe he was just constipated, it was that sort of expression!" Ramza said, grinning, unseen.

"Don't make jokes. Don't make light of this sort of prejudice!"

The hurt in Delita's voice made Ramza regret his feeble attempt at humour.

"I don't mean to make light of it, but we aren't absolutely certain that that look meant _anything_. I know you think that I'm privileged and I know nothing of prejudice, but I've occasionally felt it.

"I remember walking into father's study when I was little and Dycedarg saying "and here's one of the bastard half-breed whelps now!" He'd been having a row with father, and I think he assumed I wouldn't know what he was saying. I didn't really, then, but I never forgot the words and the tone, and once I was old enough to know what he meant I've always wondered if he still feels that way, deep down."

Actually, Ramza thought, he tried _not_ to wonder about it. He'd rather just believe that either his brother had been speaking only out of temper, or believe that it was a long time ago and that Dycedarg had changed his mind in the intervening years.

"I'm sorry, as unpleasant as that was, it simply isn't the same. I can become every bit as good a man as you, better than Argath, I'll warrant... or Dycedarg himself, for that matter. I have as much honour, as much bravery, so why does the class I was born into always have to be seen as so damned important?" Delita said.

"I wish we could change that, too. Maybe when we're older..." Ramza said.

"I hope so. I want to live in a world where everyone is treated fairly. Why should that be so hard to achieve?" Delita asked, though he already knew the answer.

They were quiet for a few moments, before Delita went on in a different tone, remembering Ramza's earlier comment:

"Hmm. Why was Dycedarg rowing with your father, to say such things so openly? Do you remember?"

"I don't know, I was very little. We were living at the Mansion, though, which means it was after father married mother, so I must have been at least five.

"Maybe the row was about the legitimation; if Dycedarg opposed it, that would explain why he said what he did." Ramza said.

Delita thought about that. To him that didn't make sense - once Ramza's father had eventually married his mother, it would have been best for the whole family to support the legitimation of their children; it minimised any scandal attached to the Beoulve name.

"One hell of a thing for Dycedarg to say to your father. I never knew they argued like that."

"Usually, when they did, it was about Dycedarg's and father's definition of honour. Dycedarg thought that what he felt was best for House Beoulve should take precedence over father doing what he felt was the right and honourable thing. I don't think they clashed frequently; it's not as if the Beoulve family honour and father's personal honour could have been in opposition _too_ often." Ramza said.

"An interesting one, your eldest brother. I'm sure he'll always do whatever is best for the House - in fact, that goes without saying - but I think he could be terribly ruthless if that was what was needed." Delita said

"I fear so. I also fear that "interesting" is _not_ the word you'd like to use. Perhaps you are right. I honour and respect Dycedarg, but he's hardly been a loving brother to us, has he?"

Delita suddenly began to laugh. His voice, when he spoke was affectionate.

"Oh Ramza, you always say "us", as if Tietra and I really were brother and sister to you and Alma."

"It's the way we grew up isn't it? It just seems right to say it that way." Ramza's voice was matter-of-fact.

"To you, perhaps. I doubt Dycedarg, or even Zalbaag would ever say it."

"I suppose not. Zalbaag's terribly fond of you and Tietra, though." Ramza said.

"Be honest; Zalbaag's terribly fond of _Tietra -_ difficult not to be."

It was dark enough that Ramza couldn't see Delita, but he could hear the smile in his voice and imagine the affectionate look on his face.

"I think he likes me well enough, but I don't think it goes further than that." Delita added.

"Well, since he got home permanently from the war, eighteen months ago, Tietra's been living in the mansion the whole time and you and I have been here, mostly. He's bound to end up fonder of her than you, under those circumstances." Ramza said.

"No need to try to console me, I don't have quite the same level of big-brother-worship that you have for him."

Ramza felt certain that Delita was grinning at him.

"He was the senior General for the whole of the Order's armies by the time he was twenty-five. Difficult not to feel pretty proud of having him for a big brother, in those circumstances." Ramza said.

"And Dycedarg will soon be the main political advisor to the Regent of little King Orinus, if the rumours about King Ondoria not being long for this world are true. You have one hell of a lot to live up to, my friend!" Delita said, a cynical tone to his voice.

"I know it." Ramza sounded dispirited at the thought.

"I was only _joking_. Ramza, you will do well at whatever you choose, I'm certain of it, but you don't have to turn yourself into a copy of one of your brothers to make your mark on the world."

Delita was sorry to have said it; he knew how much the thought that he might never live up to his brothers bothered Ramza.

"Alma keeps saying something similar." Ramza said with a half-laugh.

"Well, listen to her then; your sister's like me, she has both feet on the ground. You and Tietra might enjoy going around with your heads in the clouds, but Alma and I are the practical ones, we see how things have to be." Delita said.

"I _know_ it. That's why I always listen to the pair of you.

"Oh, how did we end up having such a deep and serious conversation? We should both be asleep!" Ramza had heard the distant striking of the clock on the front of the nearby Merchant's Guild. Then he thought he heard Delita sit up in bed.

"I'm still wide awake, I was thinking of going for a walk."

"Want company?" Ramza asked. He didn't think he'd get to sleep straight away, either.

"Y-e-s, but I was thinking of someone prettier. Juliana's room-mate is still at Eagrose, you know."

Delita got up and began to put his clothes back on.

"What, no censorious comments?" Delita asked.

"It's your life, just... don't get her pregnant, okay?" Ramza said, tone neutral.

"It hasn't got _quite_ that far yet, between us, though I'm optimistic for tonight." Delita said cheerfully.

"Yeah, well. Have fun." The last two words didn't exactly sound as if Ramza meant them.

Ten minutes later Ramza was becoming breathless from laughing so hard at a very chastened Delita.

"Sounds like you were _really _subtle, Delita!" There could be no doubt about the sarcasm oozing from Ramza's voice.

"Yeah, well... so she said that as seduction techniques went, waking a girl from a sound sleep who was exhausted because she'd been marching all day and had marched and fought yesterday, as well, was one that was guaranteed to fail." Delita confided sheepishly.

"She also said that being obvious about the fact that I'd only come to see her because I was feeling randy and wide awake was less than flattering. She told me that if I couldn't sleep she recommended a cup of hot milk and a good book."

Ramza heard Delita's boots hit the floor as he began to undress again.

"And you always tell me _I'm_ the one who's clueless with girls. Tomorrow, it sounds like you'd be better trying your grovelling techniques than your seduction techniques, if you ever want to get back into her good books."

Delita would quite often tease Ramza about his shyness around girls. He had to admit to himself, that being the one to wind Delita up about women, for a change, gave him a certain satisfaction.

"Hmph! Maybe you're right." Delita said morosely.

"And maybe she is - about the warm milk, I mean. Do you want some? I thought I might go down to the kitchens."

"You can be _such_ a big _girl_! Bring me something alcoholic if there's anything in the back of the pantry."

"Oh _yeah _\- because the cooks are going to leave _that_ around for any of us cadets to sneak in and take! Also, I'm _not_ a big girl - you're just getting childish because you aren't nearly as skilled with women as you like to pretend." Ramza was laughing slightly again.

"And you shouldn't mock someone whose heart could be broken, for all you know." Delita said resentfully.

"Delita, I'm not entirely stupid. Your heart was definitely _not_ the organ that was involved in what you wanted from Juliana tonight. I'm not surprised she threw you out!" He pulled on his breeches under his nightshirt.

"So do you want milk or not?" He asked Delita.

"No. You and your bloody milk!"

* * *

**Author's Note:**

I know that there's a fair amount of Ramza/Delita shipping for this game, but that's not the way I'm heading with this, even though Ramza told Delita how much he loves him (hopefully, it was implicit that he was saying that he loves Alma and Tietra just as much). The way I see it, they have all four become unusually close in the years since the death of Delita's parents and that has only intensified with the deaths of Ramza's parents, as well - he was just expressing that.


	6. Chapter 6 - Moogles and Their History

**Vignette 6 - Moogles and Their History**

_The Siedge Weald, __35 miles from Gariland, late evening_

The seven sat around a large campfire. It was drizzling slightly, and so they kept feeding the fire to ensure it didn't get low enough to fizzle out in the damp. The drizzle was not as unpleasant as it might have been with the heat of the fire to continuously help to dry them.

"Go on then, Delita, you're the one with the fascination for history. Tell us about the moogles that supposedly lived in these parts." Samantha said.

Delita looked blank and Ramza started to laugh.

"Ask him about the murder of some King of Romanda two centuries ago, Sam, and he could tell you all of the manoeuvring that lead to it and the repercussions that were still being felt twenty years later. Don't ask him about something as non-political as _moogles_."

"For your information, you _ignoramus_, Romanda had a revolution a little over two hundred years ago which led to the formation of a Republic, which lasted for nearly thirty years. They _exiled_ their King, they didn't murder him. When the tide turned back to favour the royal family, the republican system formed the basis..."

Delita's voice was changing from disgruntled to didactic. Ramza let his head fall dramatically to Ophellia's shoulder. Closing his eyes he made exaggerated snoring noises until he was hit on the ear by a stick that Delita threw at him.

"Fine, _be_ as thick as a plank all of your life. I doubt very much that you can tell us anything more than I can about moogles." Delita said.

"_Actually_, Delita, Father once told me and the girls that a lot of the relics they've uncovered in the last few decades in Goug, and nearby in Lionel Province, are thought to have been built by moogles. He said Goug was probably the moogles' capital. It has an excellent natural harbour, which is why humans built over the moogles' tunnels within a few years of them abandoning it, or becoming extinct, or whatever it was that happened to them – no-one knows for certain." Ramza said.

"Where was I, then, when he was telling the three of you this?" His friend asked indignantly. Ramza gave him a wide grin.

"Take a wild guess. I don't remember, for sure, but I'm betting you were in the stables mucking out, having been naughty, _yet_ _again_." That had been Delita's usual punishment, growing up. There was always plenty to do, with all the chocobos his father had owned - and so Delita had done a _lot _of mucking out.

"Oh, yes! As if you were such a bloody _angel!_" Delita said.

"Do you want to benefit from my vast moogle-related knowledge or not?" Ramza's asked, smiling serenely.

"I'm betting that's all you know!" Delita's tone had a bite that Ramza's relaxed teasing didn't.

"What's got you so touchy?" Ramza asked.

Delita rolled his eyes and made an odd "pfft" noise, but gave no other answer. Ramza, across the fire from Juliana, suspected that he was looking straight at Delita's source of touchiness.

"For your information, you moody pain in the neck, I was interested enough to go and look up more information about moogles in the library."

"All right, all right, I apologise to everyone for my mood. Now speak on, oh oracle of wisdom." Delita's voice had warmed up considerably, now the sarcasm was just their usual friendly banter.

"Actually, if you want hard facts there _is_ very little more." Ramza said with a slightly sheepish look. "Lots of speculation, of course. Round here, Sam, the moogles seem to have lived in small rural settlements. Though they do find the occasional bit of technology, what they find mostly seems to be agricultural and domestic in nature.

"With it being warm and marshy, they think that the main crop was probably rice, or maybe something similar that we don't even have, today. It looks as if they lived much as we do in rural areas - apart from their homes being in tunnels underground - small villages and farms and with similar family and domestic arrangements." He trailed off, there was little more that wasn't hugely speculative.

"My nurse used to tell me and my brothers and sisters fairy tales about moogles." Hildegarde said. "They were always full of magic – but totally unlike the magick we have these days."

"Hmm... I do wonder if that might really be the relics. You know how stories change as they are passed down through the generations - if their technology was so much more advanced than ours it could seem more like magic.

"After all, the mythical airships are said to have been designed and built by moogles, and anything that can let people sail through the air as if they were on the seas sounds pretty magical to me. Yet, I heard a rumour that they think they've found airship parts under Goug." Ramza said.

"Do you have any old moogle settlements in Limberry, Argath?" Juliana asked.

Ramza wondered if her very friendly tone was to annoy Delita. He couldn't even remember her addressing the slightly sullen blond boy directly, before now. Argath gave a start, he had been staring into the fire, only half-listening to the conversation.

"Er... I don't know." He gave her a shy smile. "Sorry, history and mythology aren't really my things."

"Ramza, I've got an idea." Delita said brightly. "I'd really like to see some of these relics, why don't you and I and maybe the girls go down to Goug for a few days this summer. By chocobo and boat it should only take three or four days to get there."

"Dycedarg should let _us_ go, but I don't know about the girls. Still it would be nice if the four of us could all go together. Come the Autumn, we should have our commissions and we could end up seeing even less of them than we have been while we've been at the Akademy."

Ramza sighed, he really hoped for his first posting to be near Eagrose, so that he could spend more time, not less, with his family.

"You know, I sometimes _wonder_ about you two and your sisters." Juliana said nastily, glaring at Delita.

Delita blinked and opened his mouth to speak but it was Ophellia, Juliana's closest friend, who headed off the potential explosion from both boys, having quickly picked up on what Juliana was implying.

"Juliana, you're annoyed at Delita for some reason, we've all realised that, but what you just said was going _too_ far. _Especially_ as Ramza, at least, hasn't done a thing to you. And you know that Lady Alma and Tietra were very kind, welcoming us to Eagrose when we were there. I really think you should apologise."

Though she was embarrassed and a little ashamed, Juliana knew that if her friend was pulling her up like this she had gone far too far – had known that without being told, truthfully. So she apologised with good grace to Ramza, and only slightly resentfully to Delita.

The mood of the party gradually became companionable again, until the drizzle turned to rain and everyone but Hildegarde, who was taking first watch, turned in for the night.

* * *

Author's note:

I was trying to decide what to do next with the little band, and I ended up checking the the Siedge Wield's description. Moogles, hmm. Well, it was something for them to talk and bicker about.

Oh, and yes, I am deliberately, if vaguely, in my ham-fisted way, referencing one of Arthur C Clarke's "laws" - the one about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. Once I realised that the moogles were engineers and scientists in Ivalice's distant past, their tech being sci-fi-ish legends being spoken about as if they were fairy tales became an appealing idea to me.


	7. Chapter 7 - The Pride of Humble Origins

**Vignette 7 - The Pride of Humble Origins**

_The Dorter side of the Siedge Weald, (___twenty miles from Dorter), evening__

"How will we contact this man your brother planted, without raising suspicion?" Argath asked as they sat around discussing today's fight and tomorrow's arrival at their destination.

"We really haven't thought this part through, have we?" Ramza said, after looking steadily at the other blond boy with dismay for a few moments.

"No, and neither did Zalbaag; he should have thought about the fact that espionage wasn't exactly our forte and warned us we'd need to come up with a plan before leaving Eagrose." Delita said.

He couldn't believe they were only a little over half a day from Dorter and only _now_ they were considering this. He'd been an idiot! So had the rest of them, of course, but his unofficial role was always the strategist, the planner, while Ramza was the leader and the on-the-spot tactician. Still, it was never too hard to come up with a plan as long as they didn't over-complicate it.

"There's an obvious way – the details we got from Zalbaag's adjutant say that this Frederick is a tall dark man and he's pretending to have been a low-born soldier. I can still sound and act like the farm boy, when it suits, so I could go to his lodgings and pretend to be his young cousin, or something, and ask to speak with him.

"I _look_ like a sprig of minor nobility or gentry, though - in these clothes, I'm obviously an Akademician. If we can get me some second hand peasant's garb, on the other hand, it might work, especially as it sounds like my build and colouring are right."

Argath muttered something about serfs. Ramza thought it had been something about Delita not needing to _pretend_ to be one, which certainly made the plan easier.

"Unlike in Limberry and Zeltennia, serfdom was abolished in the rest of Ivalice before any of us were born, Argath. And besides that, Delita's family, just like my mother's, have been freemen for generations, anyway. They weren't villeins, even before serfdom was abolished."

"A proud and noble heritage, I'm sure." Argath's words were threaded with contempt. Ramza's voice continued to be calm, though he narrowed his eyes contemptuously at the other youth.

"Far from noble, but proud enough, I can assure you. The Heirals and the Lugrias have been tenant farmers on the Beoulve lands as long as anyone can remember. They are, and always have been, hard-working, honest people. Where is the room for shame in being the descendant of good, industrious, honest folk?" Argath shook his head in apparent disbelief. Before anyone else could interject, Ramza spoke again in a casual tone.

"Delita, time for you and I to go for a short walk, I think." This was not the first instance where Ramza had, less than subtly, "pulled" Delita away from Argath's vicinity and it had always been for a similar reason. The boy was either a true bigot, or for some reason he had taken a dislike to Delita and had worked out a very effective way to bait him.

"You keep acting as if I'm about to explode at him, Ramza, whenever he does or says anything like this." Delita said, after about half a minute and they were probably out of hearing range of the others.

"You aren't the only one he angers, you know, and besides, _weren't_ you ready to explode? You looked it." Ramza looked at his friend, concerned.

"No; he's not worth the effort." Delita's voice was every bit as contemptuous as Argath's had been earlier.

"I hope you mean that. You're usually very calm and rational, but when something bothers you, you bottle it up until eventually all hell breaks loose. If that's what is going to happen here, at the very least, keep it in until after we've completed the task Zalbaag set for us." Ramza said.

"Yes sir!" Delita gave a mock-salute.

"Don't be like that, or I really _will_ make it an order as your Cadet-Captain. I'd really rather just keep it as the request of a friend." Ramza said mildly.

"Okay, okay. I won't black either of Argath's eyes or bloody his nose until after we find out what's happened to Zalbaag's spy. I won't promise more. Good enough?"

Ramza just sighed and nodded resignedly.

"You're naïve, if you think that simple words will change opinions like Argath's, you know." Delita went on.

"Maybe," Ramza said, "but how else _do_ you work towards changing someone's opinions?"

Delita barked a laugh.

"Touché, smart-arse, but I just think it will take something more radical to change that lad's prejudices." He said.

"You have a point, but since I don't want a full-blown argument with him, the best I can do is offer my own views to counter his. Come on, if you aren't going to explode at him, and I'm not either, we may as well go back. We still have to work out the details of our plan."

Hildegard spoke as they re-entered the clearing.

"Ramza, if it's just clothes that we need for Delita to do this, it's no problem; I can sort something out once we get to Dorter."

* * *

Author's Note:

No, I still can't write Argath as a half-decent person who's just got one major failing – that he's a hell of a snob - instead, he's just a complete arse.

I always wondered what happened to their original mission – they were sent to find Zalbaag's spy, yet once they leave Eagrose we never hear of the man again.

Of course, at this point, in reality, you have to go wandering about for about 3-4 weeks of game time just to level up enough to survive the next brutal fight. Dorter seems to be the point where the game laughs at you, makes rude gestures and says "...and you thought this game was easy!" Our little crew are going to bypass that aimless wandering, though - there's a spy to find and a Marquis to rescue.


	8. Chapter 8 - Cousin Fred is Dead

**Vignette 8 - Cousin Fred is Dead**

_The Merchant City of Dorter, mid-afternoon_

Hildegarde, it had turned out, was from Dorter and one of her father's stable hands was about Delita's size, so they'd borrowed a set of his clothes and given him the price of a set of brand new ones to thank him. If anyone queried what Delita was doing in Dorter, they'd agreed he could simply say that he _was_ a stable-hand working for Hildegarde's family.

Delita now stood on the doorstep of a small lodging house on the edge of Dorter's slums, talking to a slightly suspicious landlady.

"Hello, missus, Ah'm looking for me cousin, Fred. Me Aunty Ana said he'd bin stoppin' here."

"Frederick was your cousin?" She asked.

Delita heard and noted the "was", but pretended he hadn't. He smiled widely at her, playing the garrulous, open-natured country boy for all it was worth.

"Aye, second cousin. Me mam an' his mam are first cousins, but Ah call her Auntie Ana an' he calls me mam Auntie Su. Look, can y'let him know that his cousin Delita has arrived in town from Eagrose an' Ah'd like to see him.

"If he's not in, what time should Ah come back?" He continued to smile cheerfully - hopefully he'd lulled her into thinking him genuine and none too bright.

The worried suspicion on her face became tinged with a little sympathy.

"Oh. I'm sorry, lad; young Frederick died near a fortnight ago."

Delita let his face drop, then fall into shocked mournfulness and concern.

"How'd he die, like?"

"A short illness. The apothecary said nothing could be done – he wasn't even sure what caused it." She said

"Eee! His mam'll be _devastated_." He shook his head as if in disbelief. "Ah must be too late for the funeral, like?"

"Yes, I think so. Some friends of his took the body away and said they'd arrange it." She said.

"D'you know where Ah could find them? Me Auntie Ana'll wan' us to have found out everything Ah could about it." Delita said.

"Erm... I thought I recognised one of them, I think he has a little business down by the fishing wharfs. I don't know his name, though. Sorry I can't tell you more." She said.

"No, thanks a lot, missus. Ah've got me lass with us, at the minute, like," he gestured at Juliana standing a few yards away, "but once Ah've seen her home, Ah'll go down there and ask around. Ah'm much obliged." He said.

She nodded sympathetically and closed the door.

"Wipe that smug, self-congratulatory expression off your face, you've just found out your cousin Fred's dead, remember?" Juliana, clothed in a maid's dress, said quietly to him as he got close. He sobered. She took his arm and they walked along together like the young courting couple they were pretending to be.

"So, your "lass", huh?"

"Whey-aye, pet, you're me canny bonnie lass." His voice returned to its usual smooth near accent-less tone. "I really _am_ sorry about three nights ago. It was only because I was lying in bed, unable to sleep, and I _couldn't_ stop thinking about you. I was just assuming far more than I should have... and I _do_ really like you. Can't we at least be friends again? _Please?_" He'd had three days to formulate the apology. "I couldn't stop thinking about you" had struck him as a particularly good phrase to help him excuse himself, when he'd come up with it, and he was pleased with the way Juliana's expression had softened perceptibly when he'd used it.

"Yes, all right. I really like you too, _and_ I like being your "lass", only, I don't want to be taken for granted."

"Understood. I promise, it won't happen again." He bent and kissed her cheek lightly.

"You really are a _very_ bonnie lass, you know." He said with a wink and a knowing grin.

She just rolled her eyes and shook her head at him.

"So do we go down to the fishing wharfs and ask around, or go back and tell the others?" She asked after a few moments, now smiling at him and squeezing his arm.

"I think you and I have pushed our luck far enough with this. I doubt "cousin Fred" really died of a short illness. I think, maybe, all of us need to go down there together, well armed, and take a look around."

* * *

_Late evening  
_

The four girls anxiously drank tea in Hildegarde's mother's elegant drawing room as they waited for the three boys to return. Hildegarde and Juliana had both needed Phoenix Downs during the fight and, even though they were healed, they were still shaky, so Ophellia and Samantha had brought them home, while the boys Phoenix Downed the swordsman who had been in charge of the brigands and interrogated him.

The girls looked relieved, then concerned, when only Ramza and Delita entered the room.

"Argath won't be joining us for tea, ladies." Delita said. "He's rather too annoyed at Ramza for stopping him from beating the prisoner into insensibility. He muttered something about heading for a tavern and stomped off." He slumped into a seat, with a wicked grin which quickly subsided.

He and Ramza both looked as wan and shaken as Hildegard and Juliana, both of them had needed Phoenix Downs too – Delita twice – it had been a brutal fight. Ramza held a hand out, palm down, in front of him, and watched it shake, with a dispassionate air of exhaustion. He picked up one of the tiny cakes that had been provided with the tea.

"Hildy, we couldn't get something more substantial to eat, could we, please? Nothing fancy, just some fruit, or something. I'm told it helps when you are trying to get over being resurrected." Ramza asked.

Hildegard rang for a servant and gave instructions for sandwiches and fruit to be brought.

"We're you serious about what Argath did?" Samantha asked.

"Oh yes. That swordsman's health was low enough that, for a moment, I thought we were going to have to Phoenix Down him a second time, after Argath kicked him half-way across the room." Ramza said with a look of disgust.

"Well at least it yielded us answers - the Marquis is being held somewhere called the Sand Rat's Sietch. We're assuming that that must be the old desertmen's settlement. How far is that from town, Hildy?" Delita asked.

"Seventeen, eighteen miles, I think." She said.

"Pushing hard, we've sometimes marched thirty-five, thirty-six miles in a day on the way here, we should be able to get there, rescue the Marquis and get back not too long after dark, assuming we leave at first light, and the Marquis is in a fit state to walk." Ramza did not sound confident.

"Papa has far more chocobos than he ever uses. We could ride – then, if the Marquis isn't fully fit, we should still be able to get him back here." Hildegard said.

"Is your father in? We shouldn't just take them without permission." Ramza asked.

"'fraid not. He's president of the Merchant's Guild, and he's hosting some event at the Guild Hall. Mother's with him. Jonathas might still be up, though. He's my older brother. Father's grooming him to be the next great Merchant Prince of Dorter. He's supposed to be leaving early tomorrow to travel to Warjilis, that's why he didn't go to father's big banquet. He'll give us permission - he'd _better_." She said.

Ramza, seeing a certain glint in her eye as she said that, remembered that this wasn't the first time he had thought that Hildy, though she _was_ very nice, would make a formidable opponent. He suspected her brother would be only too pleased to comply without an argument, if he wanted a peaceful life. Besides, wasn't it a big brother's place to indulge his little sister?

He refused Alma and Tietra almost nothing, Delita and Zalbaag were much the same. Dycedarg was their guardian, so it was, perhaps, inevitable that he was a little sterner and less yielding, but he still tried to make Alma happy, when he could. Besides, a little sternness was probably necessary in a brother who was also your legal guardian - Alma could certainly be a bit of a brat at times and... well... he and Delita were certainly no angels.

Ramza smiled to himself, Tietra was never a brat and generally didn't get into too much trouble. Delita would tease her for being a goody-goody but really, everyone loved her for being so sweet-natured.

* * *

Author's Note:

Erm... the accent. The only one I had a hope in hell of getting consistently right was basically a stronger version of my own. So it turns out Delita's a Geordie (from the far North East of England), as far as his childhood accent goes. Presumably, Tietra can switch accents like this too, though I doubt we'll get to hear it. I tried to get a decent compromise between writing real accent/dialect and comprehensibility, I hope it works for most people – it's only there for a bit of fun.

I always wondered how they all just happened to arrive in the right place at the right time to see Wiegraf and that other knight's conversation – just a bit too lucky unless there's something that I've missed about the situation. So here, they at least had reason to have headed to that part of the slums – an indication that Frederick the spy's "friends" have a base down there. Still damned lucky to arrive just as Wiegraf does, of course...

About Frederick the spy and his death: Dycedarg, of course, set this whole kidnapping up, as Wiegraf will shortly be shouting about to Ramza and co. at their first battle against him. To me, it makes sense that Dycedarg would have told Gustav that Zalbaag had planted a spy in their midst, and it also seems logical that Dycedarg might have told Gustav how to get rid of the spy in a way that, at a pinch, could look like natural causes (or even provided him with the means to do that). Mostly this would just be to ensure that Zalbaag doesn't get to hear about the plot against Elmdore; pacifying a disapproving Zalbaag would be a waste of effort for Dycedarg and Duke Larg.

Dycedarg's tendency to be a far more prolific poisoner, here, than he is in the game is, of course, my fault. I was, however, re-reading Robert Graves' wonderful _I, Claudius_ around the time I started the vignettes. So, for anyone who knows the book (of has seen the fantastic, but ancient, TV adaptation) Dycedarg, here, is essentially a male Livia.


	9. Chapter 9 - Recovering the Marquis,

**Vignette 9 – Recovering the Marquis, the Marquis recovering**

_The Desert road back to Dorter, about 10 miles north of the town, mid-afternoon._

They had found a little shade where a natural spring had formed a pool among some rocks, not far from the side of the road and, propping the still dazed Marquis up against a tree, Argath had fetched him water to drink, bathed his face and done what else he could to make his master comfortable.

Once Ramza was sure that Argath was simply fussing over the near-unconscious man, and no longer doing anything essential to his comfort, he went up and touched the other blond boy on the arm.

"Argath, I'd like a few words; there are some things to be decided." He nodded to where the others waited, Delita and Hildegarde standing a little forward from the rest.

On reaching them, Ramza began.

"His condition's little better; I wouldn't even have moved him this far if there had been a choice. We need to decide what's best to do once we get back to Dorter."

"Surely, that's for the Marquis to decide." Argath said haughtily.

"It could be days before the Marquis is fit enough to decide anything. He's only staying on the chocobo because you're holding onto him for grim death... I should say for dear life - don't want to tempt fate."

"Superstition, Ramza? You?" Delita put in, satirically. Ramza was in the habit of making fun of Alma whenever she would touch wood, or cross her fingers – so it seemed like an odd thing for him to have said.

"Hush Delita, this is serious – we need to be making decisions. Wherever we take him, I don't want to have to move him again – so where can he go? Hildy? You know Dorter best." Ramza began to pace; he was often full of nervous energy when he was worried.

"Hmm? I don't really know. My mother would certainly be very happy to take the Marquis in and nurse him – I probably shouldn't say this, but you have no idea how serious a social climber she is, the thought of the ruler of a Province under her roof would send her into raptures. However, it's a very comfortable house and he'd certainly not lack for attention... it might not be the most restful place for him, though." Hildegarde bit her lip, uncertainly.

"Is there a hospital or similar in the city? We still don't know for certain what's wrong, why he's like this - we need a place with medical attention on hand, I think." Ramza said.

"There's a Guild of Mages. I believe the white mages have a small hospital cum alms-house, where he could probably be taken care of for a few days, while he recovers. It would be quiet and I'm told that for a reasonable fee there are private rooms with decent facilities." Hildegarde said.

Argath looked from Ramza to Samantha, who was sitting close by.

"You two have the most white magick, do neither of you have any idea what is wrong." Anxiety practically radiated from him.

"Argath, Sam and I are proficient with Cure and Raise; we're hardly experts!" Ramza sighed. "For what it's worth, I have my suspicions. You saw me cast Cure after we found him, for all the good it did. I _think_ they drugged him heavily to keep him quiet. If I'm right, a day or two of simple rest may be all he needs for the drugs' effects to wear off.

"I could be totally wrong about that, though. Even if he is merely drugged, there could be complications from such a high dose. That's why I thought of a hospital." Ramza said.

"We'll also need to arrange for guards for him." Delita put in. "It's unlikely he's still under threat, but he's already been kidnapped once." Ramza nodded and continued his pacing.

"No, _we_ have to be the ones to do that." Argath said, vehemently. "I don't trust anyone else."

"We were supposed to come to Dorter, locate Frederick and report back to Zalbaag. We've already totally overstepped our bounds by going further. You, of course, can stay with the Marquis, but the rest of us will have to return to Eagrose; we're officially still on guard at the castle. Dycedarg will go berserk as it is - he's a stickler for rules." Ramza said.

"Cowardice, Ramza?" Argath asked.

Ramza narrowed his eyes at the other boy. He wondered if Argath was deliberately trying to anger him. Probably. Yet, in the circumstances, he decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and took a deep breath to calm himself.

"Duty - we've ignored it for long enough. The Marquis is safe, the reason I am happy to leave is that I don't believe that there _is_ any continuing danger, but in case there is, we're going to split into two parties when we get to the city. One party, that's me, Juliana and Ophellia will be going to the watch house and arranging for a guard of city watch to be placed on the hospital while the rest of you, led by Delita, will be taking the Marquis to the mage's hospital."

"And If I don't agree?" Argath asked, his face held a hint of a sneer.

The benefit of the doubt could only go so far.

"Then _leave_, Argath. You aren't in charge here, _I_ am! You're a guest fighter amongst us – a very welcome one, considering your very able contributions, but nonetheless, you are not actually part of our squad. So go home, stay right here, go wherever you please, but if you are to continue with us, you do _not_ question my decisions or my orders." Ramza said it firmly, but it took real effort not to raise his voice or lose his temper with the other boy.

"For someone who so often speaks like a class traitor, you still have a remarkable amount of the arrogance of the high nobility, Ramza." Ramza had kept his temper for days now, but Argath had pushed him once too often. He still did not shout, but his icy tone did not hide his extreme displeasure.

"Class traitor? You speak like an ignorant fool! My father was Lord Barbaneth Beoulve, Argath, there is nothing in this world I am prouder of than that, but that does not and _should not_ mean that I have any reason to shun any other part of my ancestry. My father had the utmost respect for every man, woman and child in Ivalice, no matter what rank or title, or lack thereof, they held. If being like my father means being a class traitor, then I am very happy to be one and so was he! You are the arrogant one, as well as being ignorant and prejudiced!"

Argath looked resentfully at him for a moment, then sighed.

"Peace, Ramza. We both want the same thing, today - to keep my Lord Elmdore safe and have him well. I apologise for my hasty words. I simply cannot believe the Marquis is no longer in danger and, as we do not know the men of the city watch, how can we trust them?"

Ramza took a couple of deep breaths and counted to ten before speaking.

"Argath, I honestly believe that there is no danger to him now. We are hardly going to advertise where he is, or even _who_ he is.

"Besides, my brother, Zalbaag, was beginning to coordinate raids on every known position that the Corpse Brigade had ever been known to hold, when we left, and we know that he had sent people to infiltrate them - that poor dead spy is proof of that. They will all be running for, or fighting for their lives at the moment. In any case, we already dealt with a lot of the Brigade's members in the Dorter area, I'll be bound. The idea that they would have the ability or even the inclination to attempt another kidnapping, at this time, is absurd.

"For the sake of the small chance that I'm wrong about this, we will request help from the Dorter city watch. You, of course, will stay right by his side, as the only surviving member of his retinue. I would expect no less of someone who has been so staunchly loyal to him." _And we'll be rid of you_, was the unspoken corollary to that attempt at keeping the peace.

"I just worry that you may be wrong, but... as you say, _I'll_ stay with him." Argath said.

* * *

A good night's sleep and the prospect of no more Argath left the six Akademy students in fine spirits as they ventured forth into the early morning light. Ramza stopped as he saw the familiar figure waiting for them.

"Argath, have you come to tell us how the Marquis is this morning? That's good of you, I know my brother and the Duke will be anxious to know, as I'm sure we all are." He said politely.

"No, I haven't just come to let you know how he is. The Marquis came back to full consciousness in the night. He's still very shaky and unwell, and the mages say he's likely to be so for some days, but he is, at least, in his right senses again.

"He's asked me to return to Eagrose with you to convey his thanks in person to your Lord brothers and the Duke for sending us as rescuers. He also asked me to pass on thanks to _you_, of course. All of you." He raised his voice a little and glanced around at all six.

Ramza wanted to let out a groan at the thought of having to have the boy along with them again, for the next few days, but Argath hadn't finished.

"I'd also like to thank you all myself, for helping me to rescue him. I... I should apologise that I have sometimes been less than civil. My worry led me into bad moods and impolite words."

Ramza glanced briefly at Delita, whose face was a mask.

"Very well. We certainly won't be sorry to have you fighting by our side again, if we run into trouble on the way home. We're picking up supplies on the way out of town, but then it's straight on to Eagrose." Ramza said, having to try hard to give his voice even a little warmth.

* * *

Author's Note:

Almost like Zalbaag's spy, the existence of the Marquis is ignored by the game as soon as Ramza &amp; co. rescue him. So I wondered what to do with him – leave him in Dorter or take him to Eagrose? I re-watched the cut-scene at Eagrose where Dycedarg reprimands Ramza for going off into the desert without orders and then he and the Duke discuss their plot. They don't speak as if they had actually had direct contact with the Marquis, yet if Elmdore had been well enough to travel all the way to Eagrose with the cadets he surely also would have been well enough to speak to Larg and Dycedarg.

So the Marquis had to be too unwell to travel and be left behind, which, logically, should probably leave Argath with him to attend upon him. Hence me contriving a reason for Argath to continue with the party, as well as a way for Elmdore to be taken care of in Dorter. I felt like I needed to work out a logical sequence of events for Marquis Elmdore after his rescue, hence me going into detail about it here.

The real problem here may be that I'm over-thinking and trying to make logical sense of a video game!

* * *

Acknowledgement:

I'd like to thank darrelodin for pointing out in a review that I have sometimes been producing solid walls of text - I know myself that, while I don't mind reading that so much in a novel, in fan fiction it can be off-putting. I've gone back through these first nine chapters and have tried to break them into much shorter paragraphs. Technically, that means there are sometimes paragraph breaks where none needs to exist, but I hope that for readability it works better now.

Since that meant I was essentially re-proof-reading, it allowed me to pick up on a couple of errors I'd missed and I also ended up making some other very minor changes.


	10. Chapter 10 - Middle Watch in the Rain

**Vignette 10 - Middle Watch in the Rain**

_The Siedge Weald, in the early hours of the morning_

Sitting huddled up in his waxed cloak, in an attempt to keep out the rain, Delita had decided, at least an hour ago, that he didn't only dislike being on middle watch, as he had believed before tonight, he _hated_ it! Being woken up at about midnight, then having to stay wakeful for three hours or so with only one's own thoughts for company was not fun. The tiredness the next morning from having two naps at either end of the night, instead of an uninterrupted sleep was even less fun.

He pulled Ramza's clock-watch from under his shirt, opening the ornate brass cover. Still nearly an hour to go. He swore this felt like a time mage had come and cast Haste on him so that, while he was speeded up, time itself crawled by. Give him another few minutes and he'd be mired in gloomy thoughts, as he usually found himself on damp nights.

He knew what Haste felt like, Ramza's mother had been a white mage, but had had a secondary speciality in time magic. Around his tenth birthday, perhaps three months before Lady Beoulve had died, the four children had once begged her and begged her to cast Haste and Slow on them, just to see what they felt like. She warned them it could be dangerous, that time magic was only meant to aid in combat, but had, eventually, agreed to let them try it, just this once.

Alma had always been good at persuading the adults to do what she wanted, Delita remembered. Her mother had been more aware of what the girl was doing, but had usually given in anyway, eventually. Her father and eldest two brothers she had had wrapped around her finger. Lord Barbaneth, in particular was putty in his "little angel's" hands.

Delita grinned, thinking that if he ever had children, he'd know to be very careful of the word "Pa_pa_", said with just _that_ inflection!

The effects that the two spells had on the senses were fairly subtle and so, at around nine and ten, the children had been rather unimpressed. Delita did remember, though, that Slow had made the rest of the world feel like it was hurrying while Haste had made everyone else seem like they were dawdling. It was subtle, though. One had to be looking for it, he suspected, to even really notice it.

On the battle field, he thought the difference might be more discernible – Haste was about having improved reaction times, an ability to move out of the way before the blow connected and to strike quickly and accurately yourself. Slow was all about doing exactly the opposite to an opponent.

The Stop spell wasn't something they had initially asked to experience. Zalbaag had been the only one of the three Beoulve men to be at home at the time, and he had happened upon them as they had been experimenting with Slow. He'd laughed when he found out what was happening and ruffled both boys hair, ending, as always, by absently trying to smooth his little brother's cow-lick down.

"You two aren't trying this out?" He'd asked the two little girls, who were sitting, talking quietly, on a settle in the corner.

"They were - still are, I suppose." Ramza's mother had said from where she stood by the fire, looking worried. "With her Slowed reactions, Alma tripped and hurt herself, so she and Tietra have decided to wait this out. It was irresponsible of me to let them try it, Zal."

"Nonsense. How much harm can they come to with a Master white mage on hand? Did you even have to use Cure?"

"Yes - she burst her lip wide open." Lady Merissa had grimaced and looked guilty.

"Well it looks well mended now. Does it still hurt, my little angel?" He'd asked Alma.

"Not really, but I got blood on my dreth and it'th almotht new. Look, Thalbaag." She pointed at the few blood spots on the bodice.

The lisp had arrived as Alma had lost her two front teeth over the last couple of weeks and, while Zalbaag had found it endearing, Delita remembered that he and Ramza had not been so kind about it - for the few weeks it lasted they had found it hilarious to gigglingly repeat her lisped words over and over. "Thalbaag" had seemed especially humorous. It had earned them repeated thumpings from Alma, but that hadn't deterred them.

"Don't worry so much, Merissa, she's not hurt and Ramza, in particular, will probably be very grateful, the first time he feels this in battle, that he's already experienced it. It might even be a kindness, of sorts, for you to cast Stop on him when he's older, before he ever has to face it on the battlefield. I remember the feeling of abject terror the first time I ever experienced it – right in the middle of a fight." He'd shuddered.

Lady Merissa had blanched at the very idea.

"Yes, I remember what it's like as well. As a support mage, you hope you can stay well back and avoid that sort of thing, but I well remember the only two times I had it cast on me. I had to be Phoenix Downed both times.

"It was less the dying itself, more the waiting, unable to move, speak or even do anything but stare straight forward and strain your ears. What I found so terrifying was knowing that I would feel the pain of someone's blade bite into me any moment and that I could do nothing to prevent it, nor even see it coming.

"I don't mind admitting that both times it happened, I woke up in cold sweats for weeks afterwards, having dreamt I was completely paralysed and just waiting for death again."

Delita had seen Zalbaag nod at that. He wondered now, whether Zalbaag had just been agreeing about the horror of waiting, completely incapacitated, for death, or if he too had actually suffered nightmares about it.

Ramza, he remembered, had asked to have the spell cast on him right then. Delita thought it had probably been a little brother's hero-worship of Zalbaag, that had prompted that bravado - bravado and competitiveness was certainly what had prompted Delita to second the idea, that both of them could be Stopped. The girls hadn't been stupid enough to join in, and the two adults had both said "No!" in the tone that all four children knew _really _meant no.

"Ask me again when you're sixteen or seventeen and ready for your first battles and I _might_ consider it." Lady Merissa had said to her son. "I can understand your brother's reasoning, but I will _not_ do it until then."

She had smiled at Zalbaag, but her eyes had been worried. Ramza's mother, he recalled, had never been happy that all of the Beoulve men simply assumed that her beloved little boy would automatically become a warrior.

He remembered, not long after this, just weeks before Lady Merissa's death, a bitter comment from her, said in passing to Lord Beoulve, about her only son becoming yet more fodder for this seemingly endless war. "Poor Delita too, no doubt." She had added as she watched the two boys playing with tin soldiers on a battlefield of their own imagining...

His eyes were drooping and the fire was going out – the rain was getting heavier. He threw more wood on, but it was damp and that didn't help. Damn it! Just as well Sam was on final watch and she'd recently progressed to learning some black magic. He hoped casting Fire would relight the camp-fire, because nothing he did seemed to be working to prevent it going out.

He checked the rain-cover on the candle lantern – yes that was still working, thank goodness, and the candle should last until first light, by the look of it. In the dark of a cloudy night - with no fire-, moon- or star-light - if you had no lantern, you were left relying on your ears alone to detect intruders. That tended to leave you ridiculously jumpy! He took up the lantern and checked the clock-watch again. Only about twenty minutes to go. He stifled a yawn.

After a few moments, Delita found himself speculating idly about whether Ramza realised that he had started to become the thing he wanted above all things in the world – he was becoming very like his elder brother Zalbaag. Zalbaag was a very good man, an honourable man and he was an excellent leader and tactician. Ramza was gradually becoming all of these things.

Zalbaag, though, was not the strategist or the long-term planner that his elder brother Dycedarg was. This would be a very serious drawback in a General, except that Dycedarg was always there for advice and guidance for his younger brother. Delita often found Dycedarg hard to like, but he could readily admit that he respected and even admired Dycedarg's acumen and strategic planning abilities.

Without conceit, Delita knew that he had some of the same qualities as Lord Dycedarg. This was ignoring his recent slip, of course, when he should have been helping Ramza plan for their arrival at Dorter, and instead he'd been too preoccupied about Juliana's rejection, Argath's sneers and the fun of being off on their own.

He wondered if that was going to be his role in life – Ramza's advisor and adjutant. In ten years time, Delita imagined that Ramza would probably acting as Zalbaag's second in command. Another Beoulve General. For a low-born man to become aide-de-camp to General Beoulve would be something indeed... but was it enough? Should it be enough?

He hated to say it, even inside his own head, but in many ways he outdid Ramza – even admitting it to himself felt like disloyalty, but it was also true! Delita was not only a great strategic planner, he was a more than passable tactician. He could understand the political implications of military decisions and he was generally calmer and more rational than either Ramza or Zalbaag.

What he knew he lacked was their innate leadership ability. People said, without exaggeration, that Barbaneth Beoulve's men had been so loyal and devoted that they would have followed him to certain death, if that was what he had required of them. Zalbaag didn't rate quite such adulation, yet, but Delita had seen signs amongst the men stationed at Eagrose that told him that it could well come to that, soon.

And Ramza? Whether he liked it or not, _he_ followed Ramza like a faithful hound, and barely ever questioned his final decisions. Yes, part of that was simply that he often had had great influence on those decisions, but even when they occasionally disagreed on a point, ultimately Delita did not resent or question Ramza, he simply followed.

As short a time as this team had been together – the four girls had come to all look up to Ramza and, like Delita himself, they followed him without question and deferred to his decisions. Even the obnoxious Argath had backed down and given two apologies in as many days, and had not tried to undermine Ramza's plans once decisions had been made.

That brought him back to his current problem. Ambitions were all very well, but as a man of peasant stock he was not even supposed to be able to hold a commission in the army. There had yet to be a General who didn't hold an aristocratic title, and he didn't think there was a Brigadier or even a Colonel who didn't, at least, come from the landed gentry. Most other officers had similar backgrounds, though a few, these days, were coming from the upper echelons of the wealthy middle classes, so perhaps things were improving slowly.

Actually it wasn't strictly true that low-born men _never_ gained commissions. Occasionally there would be an exception. Wiegraf Folles had been just such a one.

Discovered to be able to channel the Holy Sword techniques, which were extremely uncommon and always highly prized, Wiegraf had been given an Ensigncy by Lord Barbaneth and had gained two subsequent promotions, ending the war as Captain of the Dead Men. A Captain whose use had ended with the war and whose men, all volunteers, no less, had been discharged with almost a year's back-pay and their discharge bonuses unpaid.

Was it any wonder that they had turned against the Order of the Northern Sky?

In the privacy inside his own head he would admit that when he had spoken to Ramza of how Dycedarg was an "interesting" man, what he had actually meant was that his legal guardian was a dyed-in-the-wool dishonourable bastard. Seeing Wiegraf Folles twice in as many days had forcibly reminded Delita of the day, a little over a year ago, when he had first seen the man.

Dycedarg had been up at the Castle, in conference with the Duke and Delita had been asked to run up there with a message for Lord Beoulve, a task he or Ramza would sometimes undertake when home from school. So he had happened to be just leaving Eagrose Castle as Wiegraf and his three Lieutenants had approached, and respectfully ask for parley with the Duke or either of the Lords Beoulve. Dycedarg had given orders to refuse them entry and would not even contemplate hearing or reading any petition about men's rights or listen to the truth about their suffering families.

As far as Delita knew, Dycedarg hadn't even tried to justify why he was refusing to see them or let them speak to the Duke. Lord Barbaneth would not only have listened to everything the men had to say he would have gone to the Duke and the King and petitioned _on_ _the men's behalf_, Delita was sure.

Yes, Delita knew that he had some of the same qualities as Lord Dycedarg Beoulve. That he could _certainly_ admit without conceit. He wished he could admit it without a sense of unease. He sometimes hated that he could think, even a little, like that man. He knew he had plenty of ambition, but he hoped that he would always remain a decent, honourable man who would only ever use ethical means to achieve his own ends.

Checking the clock-watch revealed that it was time to change watch. He went to wake Samantha.

* * *

Author's Note:

This is something a little different for a variety of reasons. I made a decision not to include the battles, or extensive discussion of them, but I am keen to try to integrate bits of the game's mechanics into the setting, nevertheless - hence the Haste/Slow/Stop part. I also tried to make this "introspection" piece have a feel of someone's wandering thoughts when they are alone with no company but themselves.

If I made it too wandering, leave me a comment and I'll try to make any future similar pieces a bit tighter. I want to do one from Ramza sometime soon too - I did Delita first because he's easier and more interesting to write - Ramza has so much Mary Sue potential. Please leave feedback about anything in these first ten chapters, for that matter.

* * *

**Historical Trivia – Clock-Watches**

Ancestor to the pocket-watch, dating from about Elizabethan times, they were a small clock, with only an hour hand, that were generally worn around the neck like a giant locket/medallion on a chain (hence Delita pulling it out from under his shirt). Anyone who already knew what one was - sorry if this note seems patronising. (The reason I include it is that I didn't know what one was, and I tend to be a bit of a history geek. I originally had Delita using a pocket watch, but for the faux-late-medieval setting that seemed all wrong. So I ended up googling "forerunner of the pocket watch" and found something that fit a late-medieval/early-renaissance setting better).


	11. Chapter 11 - Reporting to the Head

**Vignette 11 - Reporting to the Head**

Gariland Royal Military Akademy, Magick City of Gariland, early evening

Ramza entered the Head Master's study, with Delita a step behind. It was early evening and they had just finished stowing their belongings in their room.

"Sir, we've come to report to you, as you requested we should on our way back to Eagrose." Prejudiced though he could be towards the low-born, the Head Master was otherwise quite a likeable old man. Ramza was not entirely sorry to be speaking to him this evening, especially as he had such success to report.

"Yes, yes, of course, though it was really only _you_ that I wanted to see, Ramza. I only want a report from you on how your squad fares." The old man smiled indulgently at Ramza, more or less ignoring Delita. Ramza gave a tiny sigh.

"So I understood, sir, but Delita's my second, so I had assumed that you would also..."

"No, no. You run along, Delita." The old man said, with an unusual show of warmth, albeit patronising warmth, towards Delita.

Delita nodded and gave the requisite salute, though he rolled his eyes at Ramza as he turned on his heel.

"Take a seat, my boy, and tell me if you learned anything from the spy your brother sent you to find."

Ramza explained what had happened, the spy dead, Delita recognising Wiegraf Folles and them interrogating the prisoner, only to find that the Marquis was a half-day's ride away – without mentioning Argath's over-enthusiasm for the process.

"So you rescued the Marquis?" The Head asked.

"Yes, sir, sort of, though, strictly speaking, he had already been more than half-rescued by Wiegraf Folles, himself. We came upon Wiegraf just after he'd killed his Lieutenant. From what he said, he killed him for having betrayed their cause, by kidnapping the Marquis in the first place. Sir, if that's the truth, that Wiegraf Folles killed a man he'd long trusted for having been so unprincipled, surely it would be possible to bring him to the negotiating table? He seems a man of honour."

"You would need to speak to your brothers about that, but I fear they will tell you that things have gone too far for that. Besides, think, Ramza, if one of his own Lieutenants has betrayed him, how could Folles hope to guarantee that any of his people would stick to any agreement made at talks between him and the Duke or your brothers."

"I suppose he couldn't. Still, the Brigade are likely to all die for their convictions, surely for Wiegraf and his people it would be better to gain half a loaf..." Ramza trailed off.

The Head Master was right; The Corpse Brigade was such a rag-tag group that Wiegraf couldn't possibly guarantee what all of his people would do.

Ramza felt unutterably frustrated – dozens, nay _hundreds,_ of people were going to die. Some for their conviction that they had to fight for their principles of equality, many more because they just hated the aristocracy that much.

Would it be any better for those who died for their convictions? They'd be just as dead as those who died for pure hatred. Their families would be just as bereft of a husband or wife, a brother or sister, a daughter or son. He had no doubt about the Order winning – Dycedarg and Zalbaag had planned the campaign together and Zalbaag would execute that plan. As long as they had sufficient numbers, they couldn't really fail.

He had no idea if the Head Master had noticed his reverie, but the man spoke as if he had not, asking Ramza to finish his report. Ramza did so, then made as if to excuse himself and leave.

"Tell me, Ramza, how is your squad shaping up?" The old man said, stopping him.

"Very well indeed, sir. The four girls and I have been increasing our skills in magicks, currently Samantha and I are working on black magick, with secondary white magic and Hildegarde, Ophellia and Juliana are practising white with black secondary. All of us also shoot a bow pretty well. Delita's decided to stay in a more physical role and so he's still perfecting his skills as a squire, for now, but he's taken his turn as team chemist and gained a few useful skills there, also.

"As a group, I feel we've already formed a strong bond – we get on remarkably well and everyone pulls their weight. We all know we can rely on each other and all in all I'm very impressed with the way the team have become a cohesive unit, so quickly. Especially as Hildy was a last minute substitution."

"And your friend, Delita, you are happy with him as your second-in-command?" Ramza had wished to speak to the old man about this when the choice was made, but hadn't had the courage, or even much opportunity. He was nervous, but forced himself on.

"More than happy but... sir, may I speak freely, please?"

"If it's about Delita, then of course." The Head said.

"It is... I was wondering, sir, if you realise how much Delita is wasted in acting as my second-in-command. He has all of the qualities needed in a military leader but he needs practise at actually being in charge. He'd make an excellent cadet-captain – I say that not only as his friend, but as someone who has spent his life around great generals, observing them. I don't think I am being over-partial when I say he has what it takes to become a superb commander." Ramza said.

The Head Master looked at Ramza, as if weighing his words.

"If I said to you that I would happily take your word about that, and asked you to step down as Captain and put Delita in charge of your squad, instead, would you be happy to act as _his_ second in command?" Ramza searched the old man's face to try to see if he was serious – he looked it. Sighing he said.

"Of course. I'd not _want_ to step down, but if you tell me I have to, there's no-one I would be happier to follow than Delita, sir. He'd be every bit as good as I am, as a leader, sir – probably better." The old man nodded thoughtfully.

"Can you think why I might have been reluctant to put Delita in charge of a squad?"

"Yes sir, his birth, sir. You didn't want to put someone of his low-birth in charge of a squad, sir." That was a bad habit, Ramza reminded himself, larding your answer with "sir" when you were worried that you were about to offend. The Head Master didn't look as if he was offended, Ramza thought, thankfully.

"That plays its part," the old man said, "you look surprised to hear me say it, Ramza. Well, you shouldn't be. As many leadership qualities as you say Delita has, it will be difficult for him to ever become a senior commander in the army, as things stand. I have to give those who are likely to be given responsibility at a young age, such as yourself, priority as captain when we make up these cadet squads.

"Normally, it would have been against my better judgement to give someone of Delita's birth even the lieutenancy, but he has proved himself a very able student and with yours and your brothers' patronage he may well rise higher than anyone of peasant-stock ever has in the Order of the Northern Sky. Just as you are likely to become a general one day, I would imagine your friend may well manage to become, at least, our first low-born colonel." The old man looked self-satisfied, but this answer gave Ramza no sense of satisfaction.

"Sir, if Delita is as able as I am, shouldn't he be just as capable of becoming a general?"

"Ramza, you are being naïve if you really believe that." The Head said.

Ramza wasn't _quite _that naïve. He hadn't asked the question because he really believed that that was what _could_ happen, but because it was what he felt convinced _should_ be able happen.

"What about that protégé of Marquis Elmdore's that you had with you on your way through here a week ago? You said that he's still with you. How well do you feel he has he integrated with your squad?" The old man asked.

"Argath? I feel that I have failed with him, sir. He has not integrated well. I find I cannot like him, and none of the others appear to have many positive feelings about him either." Ramza said, wishing the Head has not remembered Argath, Ramza was thoroughly dissatisfied with the whole situation.

"And do you feel that this is his fault or yours?"

Ramza didn't think that that question was as innocuous as the Head Master's innocent-sounding tone implied.

"I... I want to say his, sir – after all, there are six of us who dislike him. However, I am the leader of the squad, and had I made more effort to help him to integrate, perhaps the others would also have tried to be more tolerant." Except Delita, he thought, Argath would never have managed to endear himself there, with his affected air of superiority, due to his supposedly elevated rank.

"I will try to do better in future, sir, try to make him feel more welcome amongst us." Ramza said.

The old man nodded his agreement, smiled, then dismissed Ramza.

* * *

Author's Note:

We're roughly at the half-way point of the story of the "flash-back within a flash-back" part (i.e. Chapter 1) of FFT, now.

I acknowledge that this is a bit of an uneventful vignette, but I wanted to move away from every chapter being "Ramza and Delita bickering and/or discussing stuff" which is what I feel I've written quite a lot of so far, but that was never my sole objective. The game's story doesn't really pick up pace until we get back to Eagrose, which should be the vignette after next.


	12. Chapter 12 - Girl-Talk in the Graveyard

**Vignette 12 - Girl-Talk in the Graveyard**

_Mandalia Plain, 16 miles from Eagrose, early evening_

There had been a battle that afternoon and the boys had been in the thick of things - even Ramza, who had fought as a black mage - but the girls had managed to hang back and fire spells from a distance. They had, therefore, been only too happy to let the tired, blood-spattered boys go off to bathe in the nearby river, while they set up camp.

After they finished that, they were able to settle down and have a proper chat, just amongst themselves – something they hadn't had much chance to do since leaving the Akademy. The boys were great, of course, but sometimes you wanted a few minutes of talk without them.

"I don't like this place," Samantha said, "these stones make it look like a graveyard."

"Well there's a cheerful thought!" Hildegarde said.

"I'm just _saying_..." Sam said tiredly, trailing off.

After a few moments she went on in a dull voice.

"Is this what you all thought it would be like?"

"What? What do you mean by "this"?" Hildy asked.

"The fighting, the being in the army?" Sam said.

"We aren't in the army yet." Ophellia said quietly, almost as subdued as Sam.

"That's the thing, isn't it? This isn't even the army and yet we act like it was." Sam said. Ophellia and Hildy looked at each other, neither was sure what that was supposed to mean.

"Sam you're in the fourth year of the Military Akademy – surely you _wanted _to go into the army when you came to the school?" Hildy asked.

"Not really," Sam said, biting her lip, "I just didn't want to end up married off to one of the neighbouring barons like my two elder sisters. I wanted more freedom, and so when my little brother – Deryk, you know, in second year - dared me to tell father I wanted to go to the Gariland Akademy, I did."

"Good grief, Sam, are you saying that you're only just realising now that it was a mistake?" Hildy asked.

"I don't know. It's still better than the alternative, I think. My sister, Minerva, was made to marry one of our neighbours and he's _vile -_ old, fat, smells odd _and_ he beats her, I think. I may not always enjoy this life, but I'd rather be here, shooting Thunder at panthers than go through _that_." Sam said.

"Your family stick to the old ways - arranged marriages where the girl has no say, and all that?" Hildy asked.

"Yes." Sam said, simply.

"Mine too." Ophellia said. "The difference is, I've always really _wanted_ to be in the military. My eldest brother is a Brigadier and I idolised him when I was little - wanted to be just like him - so I persuaded father that I should come to the Akademy. It was different, four years ago, though, when we all started at school. The war was still on, and there was a need for dozens of new officers each year. If I don't get a posting immediately, my father may marry me off, anyway.

"My uncle, my mother's brother, is a senior officer in the Lionsguards. I was thinking of writing to him and telling him how well we're doing and sounding him out about a place with them. I wanted to be in the _real_ army but guarding the Queen or the Princess is better than going home, just to become some man's chattel." Ophellia said, sighing.

"There wouldn't be a place for all four of us with the Lionsguard, would there? I think living in the capital for a year or two might be fun." Hildy said with a grin.

"If we train hard as knights, there might be. Uncle once said that he thinks the commander is rather short-sighted; he employs only physical fighters, even the female guards, which Uncle Esmond thinks is stupid. Whether we like it or not, none of us will ever be as strong as a broad six-foot bloke with the muscle and sinew to swing a battle-axe all day. I mean look at _me_!"

Ophellia was the most delicate of the four girls, short and slender. It meant she had eventually been forced to throw herself into the magical training harder than the physical, whatever her true preference might have been. She was stronger than she looked, but it was still a great disappointment to her that, as petite as she was, she would never be ideal knight material.

"So many women end up specialising in magic, that physical fighters are at premium for the Royal Ladies' guard."

"What about you, Juli? Want to join the Lionsguards with us?" Hildy asked Juliana with a laugh, Juliana being the only one of them who had not joined in the conversation.

"Hmm?" Juliana said, clearly distracted. Hildy changed tack, still trying to draw her into the conversation.

"Why did you want to join the army? Assuming you did." She threw a puzzled glance at Sam with those last words.

"Oh, I guess it just seemed like the only thing - all of my family are career military. Seemed like I'd do it too." She said, slightly vaguely.

Hildy frowned at her.

"Where were you and Delita last night, anyway? The rest of us all went to the pub after the Headmaster finished speaking to Ramza." She asked.

"Oh we went for a walk." Juliana said, even more vaguely.

The walk had lasted all of twenty minutes, the rest of their evening had been spent in her room. She'd wanted a few kisses and a cuddle, but things had gone a lot further than she'd originally intended – though she couldn't blame him for that... or, at least, no more than she could blame herself.

"It's a shame that you didn't come; Ramza bought us a few rounds and even Argath came out of his shell a little." Hildy said.

"Really?" Juliana didn't sound particularly interested.

"What's up, Juli? You're not really with us, are you?" Ophellia asked.

"I... nothing, everything's fine." She said, trying to smile normally.

"Did you and Delita have another row?" Ophellia asked, quietly.

"No... No, nothing like that." Juliana said.

"Juli, what's wrong?" Sam asked.

"Nothing! Nothing's wrong; everything's fine! Why am I suddenly being interrogated?" Juliana snapped. She got the her feet and stalked away.

"She's only been moody like this in the last couple of months whenever she and Delita have had a disagreement." Ophellia, her closest friend among the girls, said, with a shake of her head.

"She said they didn't have a row." Sam pointed out.

"You don't think the two of them... _you know_?" Hildy asked, looking a little worried.

"What? You mean...?" Sam asked, her eyes wide.

"I'd better go after her." Ophellia said, sighing heavily and getting to her feet.

"Here come the boys." Sam called after her.

Ophellia shocked Delita by throwing him a filthy look as she walked away from their camp; they usually got on well.

"What have I done?" He asked the other two girls as he approached.

"We don't know; we just know that Juli seems rather closed-mouthed and upset. So I suspect _you_ already know what you've done." Hildy said, sounding disapproving as she watched colour rise into the boy's cheeks.

"Where _is_ Juliana?" He asked, looking worried.

"She went off in that direction." Sam said, pointing to where he'd seen Ophellia go. Delita strode quickly off after the two girls.

"Ramza, was Delita already in your room when we got back from the pub last night?" Ramza used Fire to light the camp-fire that the girls had already built, but not lit, before he replied.

"Hmm? No."

"What time did he get back?" Hildy asked.

"Don't know, he didn't light a candle, just got into bed. I'd been asleep a while, though, I think." Ramza said, fiddling with the top of one of his boots.

"Did he say anything?" Sam asked.

"Just "'Night, Ramza", I think - I was still half-asleep."

Hildy narrowed her eyes at Ramza, she knew their captain wasn't _this_ dense. He knew what they were asking and was trying to ignore the real import of the questions.

"Did he say where he'd been when you got up this morning, then?" Hildy asked. Ramza raised a frustrated hand to his head.

"Look Hildegarde, Samantha, if you want to know about Delita's movements last night, ask him yourselves!" Ramza said, clearly exasperated.

"Oh, don't you worry, I _will_!" Hildegard said, in a tone that boded no good for the other boy.

Ramza briefly considered reminding her that he was their Cadet-Captain and Delita his second in command but decided that pulling rank probably wouldn't get a good reaction, especially since they were, sort of, off duty at the moment.

* * *

Author's Note:

I wanted to think a bit more about what life for women in this late-medieval setting might be like (admittedly only upper-middle and upper class women, in this case). The problem is that late-medieval settings and women fighting as part of an army just do not mix well, so it suddenly occurred that one way out of having to submit to the cultural norms for these women would _be_ going into the army. Pre-marital sex also isn't socially acceptable in a medieval setting, especially where a strict religion plays a large part in life, hence Juliana getting so worried about what they've done. Delita hasn't done anything wrong, in this case, she's just feeling conflicted that she's committed a sin and broken the social taboos. I imagine I'll return to these themes once I hit Chapters 2-4 and have Agrias and the other female characters to explore them with (some of them are also several years older that the cadets, so that will also lend a slightly different twist).

Oh, if anyone has anything they'd particularly like to see in one of these vignettes, or any suggestions at all, really, make a comment/review or PM me, please. I'd welcome the ideas.


	13. Chapter 13 - Faffing About

**Vignette 13 - Faffing About**

_Beoulve Mansion, Eagrose, Early Afternoon_

"Thank-you for what you were trying to do in there, Delita, but, please, don't ever do that again with Dycedarg - you _know _what he's like!" Ramza said as they walked back to the Mansion.

They'd arrived at the Beoulve Mansion around midday and sent a messenger up to the castle, where Dycedarg was apparently attending upon the Duke. Zalbaag was at the army barracks, further down the valley, so Ramza had sent a messenger to him too, reporting their success. The messenger had returned from Dycedarg, post-haste, demanding their immediate attendance.

Instead of the congratulations they'd felt entitled to, the three boys had been given a severe tongue-lashing for exceeding their orders. On seeing his friend appear to be physically drooping under the thorough upbraiding, Delita had impulsively spoken up to try to take all of the blame onto himself. Ramza was right, of course, lying to Lord Dycedarg was not a way to endear either of them to him.

Delita didn't respond to Ramza. He felt far more rebuked than thanked, but he knew that what Ramza had just said was just - as accomplished a dissembler as Dycedarg was, he hated to be lied to himself. Argath spoke up.

"I see that what you said on the way back into Dorter, with the Marquis, was correct, Ramza. I thought you were just trying to get out of the tedious duty of guarding a sick man, but now I realise that you really did have reason to worry about your brother's reaction... even if I can't understand why he wouldn't be more pleased."

Ramza didn't answer him for a moment, instead greeting the guards on the gate of Mansion Beoulve as they passed through.

"I don't know why he isn't pleased either, Argath, he..._ Zal... Hey ZALBAAG!_" The last was in a deafening shout.

Ramza jogged towards the distant, retreating back of his elder brother, who was heading from the stables to the house. The older man turned and grinned at the younger.

"Ramza, I hear we are to congratulate you, yet again, on your success. You really are doing us proud, brat!"

"Well at least _you're_ not annoyed with us!" Ramza said, in relief, as Delita and then Argath caught him up.

"Dycedarg? I know." Zalbaag sighed. "He thinks you should have stayed on the Eagrose battlements and left the fighting to more experienced men."

"Zal, you _did_ tell him that you told us to go to Dorter, didn't you?" Ramza asked anxiously.

"I told him that I'd told you that my spy had gone missing – it's a terrible shame about Frederick, of course – and that I'd left the option open for you to go and investigate. I couldn't tell him I'd ordered you - because I hadn't."

Unwatched by Zalbaag, Delita rolled his eyes at that. He wondered if Zalbaag had made it clear that he'd _as good as_ ordered them to go. Zalbaag's tendency to always speak only the truth was like Ramza's - as frustrating as hell - and it could sometimes lead to just as many misunderstandings as an outright lie.

Dycedarg would know, of course, that Zalbaag – General Beoulve – had strongly implied to the cadets that they should go and one did not ignore even the merely implicit orders of one's general. Nor could they, realistically, have left the job he had given them half-finished and just come home after they had discovered that the Marquis was being held less than a day's journey from Dorter.

Ramza would tell him that he was being needlessly suspicious of Dycedarg, but Delita worried why in Ivalice the man _wasn't_ pleased. The Marquis, as ruler of Limberry Province, had been due on an unofficial visit to the ruler of Gallione Province. As that ruler's closest advisor and most trusted friend, Lord Dycedarg should be delighted that it was a unit led by his own brother that had rescued the Marquis - it should do him much credit with Duke and Marquis alike... shouldn't it? If he was upset and displeased, what did that mean was _really_ going on?

Ramza had been right, the day they first left the Akademy, they were sixteen and no-one would let them play political games. Once they had gone on this final raid against the Brigade, they would be back to Eagrose for a brief spell guarding the castle walls, then, once all the regular troops returned to duty, they'd be back to school for a few weeks until they graduated. Nor, realistically, would anyone let him play those games _after_ he graduated, a raw low-born ensign posted the gods knew where.

He realised that Ramza had spoken to him.

"Hmm?" he responded.

"Nothing important. You were miles away." Ramza said with a smile and a shake of the head.

"Zalbaag, why would Lord Dycedarg be so very upset that we had gone on to rescue the Marquis? He surely cannot think that, once we had discovered that he was just a few miles from Dorter, we would just _leave_ him there, for at least ten days, while more experienced troops were dispatched, can he?" Delita asked, walking beside the brothers towards the Mansion, Argath trailing them.

"Oh, I don't suppose that he is upset that you _rescued_ the Marquis. He's annoyed that you left without telling him you were going and that, in the end, you acted without orders or adequate back-up. He thinks you're too young to have undertaken such a rescue. Just between us, boys, I think he's been dwelling too much on what could have gone wrong, rather than what _did_ go right.

"He wasn't really bothered that you had gone to Dorter, even after we got your note saying that my spy was dead. It was only the note that arrived two days ago, that said you were setting out to rescue the Marquis, that really got to him. He fumed for hours about you exceeding your orders. Still, he should have known," he clapped his little brother on the shoulder, "that troops led by a Beoulve seldom fail." He laughed and ushered them towards the house.

That just confirmed for Delita that Dycedarg hadn't wanted the Marquis rescued.

* * *

An hour later, the boys had bathed and had felt relieved to change into something that wasn't armoured, for once. They spoke to the first servant they came across to find out where, either their sisters, or the other four girls were. As it turned out, all of them were in Tietra and Alma's rooms, which flummoxed the boys.

"All six of them?" Ramza asked.

"Yes sir."

They turned around and went to their sisters' suite of rooms, Ramza assuring Argath that, yes, it would be fine for him to come along, which led Delita to raise an eyebrow questioningly at Ramza, when their guest wasn't looking.

They reached the room, knocked and went in. They hadn't known what the girls would be spending their time on, but they hadn't expected this.

"What are you all doing?" Ramza asked his sister confusedly, through the clamour of chatter and giggling.

"Well Tietra and I have a new lady's maid and she's fantastic at dressing hair and doing make-up, so we invited the girls to come to our rooms to be pampered before dinner." Alma said.

"But dinner isn't for a couple of hours, and what about all this other... girly stuff?" Ramza said, shaking his head disbelievingly as he gestured at Samantha who was filing Ophellia's nails for her.

"Ramza," Alma said patiently, sounding like she was speaking to a five-year-old, "this girly stuff is _fun_ and is part of preparing for the banquet - _and_ four of your companions are _girls_, believe it or not, which makes _girly stuff_ completely appropriate. And how long do you suppose it will take poor Jaane, our maid, to get six of us ready?"

"They're not just _girls_, they're my squad and they looked perfectly presentable as they were – _in_ _uniform_. They don't need to faff about with themselves like this – you shouldn't have encouraged it."

Ramza gradually became aware that what he had said had not made him any friends amongst the female part of his squad - the looks being directed at him were not the happiest.

"_Faff about with themselves! Huh! _And I didn't _encourage_ it. There is a banquet tonight so I offered the services of our new maid to any of the girls who wanted to have their hair and make-up done and it turned out they all did, and I'm giving Jaane a large bonus for working so hard to look after us all, today.

"As I understand it, all seven of you have been running around clad in armour, mud, blood and guts, for a couple of weeks now and, even if _you_ are completely oblivious, four of your comrades _are_ girls. Girls like to look nice and feel nice and _smell_ nice. Just because you three are barbarians doesn't mean Sam, Hildy, Juli and Ophellia are."

Ramza didn't reply, he just looked nonplussed at his sister's vehemence.

"Believe it or not, Alma, even we three barbarians don't go around _deliberately_ daubing ourselves with mud, blood and guts." Delita put in, grinning at Ramza's obvious perplexity.

Ramza retreated to sit next to Tietra and get out of his own sister's direct line of fire. Delita went over to sit with Juliana, who had already had her hair done, and murmured in low tones.

"Well I think you _always_ look nice and feel nice and smell nice, so now that she's made your hair extra pretty, I'm not sure there's anything else that this Jaane could possibly do." She blushed and beamed at him.

"What was that?" He asked suddenly, raising his voice, taking his attention off Juliana and giving it all to his sister and Alma, who were sitting one on either side of Ramza, now.

"We were telling Ramza that Zal says he's going to see about persuading the Duke to throw a Grand Ball to celebrate, once the Corpse Brigade are defeated. He says it will be a nice thank-you to all of you cadets for so willingly helping out with the guard duty – or in your case rescuing Marquises and taking part in the raids, I suppose." Alma said.

"Tietra, I'm not sure that I remember any of the dances, will you help me practise beforehand?" Ramza said, almost plaintively. "Alma told me she wouldn't ever dance with me again after that last little mishap."

"You _dropped_ me when we were practising the Volta and I ended up with a sprained ankle!" Alma said indignantly to her brother.

"As long as it isn't the Volta, you practise." Delita said darkly. It was classed as a slightly risqué dance.

"Actually, that's the one I particularly want to..." Ramza began, only to be cut off.

"No!" Delita said. "I remember the last time the two of you danced..."

"No! _You_ can just shut up, Delita Heiral!" His usually mild sister suddenly flared up. "I was _eleven_ and it was only... Gods, you are so damned embarrassing!"

"Mind your language, Tietra." Was all he could think to say in reply. He was a little shocked, that sort of reaction was just so out of character for her.

"What, "damned"? Like you don't use that and worse all the time! What are you, my dad, now? Good grief, Delita, you're only fourteen months older than me! And I suppose you and Juliana have never so much as kissed, hmm?" She paused for a moment, glancing apologetically at Juliana.

"Sorry, Juli, I don't mean to drag you into this, but this is just that this is _so_ typical of _him_!"

As Teitra got up from the settle and stalked into the bedroom, Tietra was was still pointing accusingly at her brother. Delita could do nothing but blink at her retreating back, but then he turned back to the offensive.

"I mean it, Ramza, you two are not..." again he was cut off.

"Oh, for the gods' sake, Delita, just shut up! She's right you _are_ embarrassing _and_ you're making a fool of yourself!" Alma jumped up and followed Tietra.

Delita could not see Juliana's amused expression, as she'd deliberately angled her face away, so he threw an arm around her shoulders as he stared resentfully after Alma and Tietra. He was vaguely aware that he _had_ made something of an idiot of himself, all because of one kiss Ramza had stolen from Tietra, during a dance four years before - and it had, after all, been nothing but a brief peck on the lips.

He reflected that he probably resented it more than he should have, in part, at least, because he'd subsequently tried stealing a kiss from Alma, in retaliation, a few days later, and been shoved away so hard he'd landed on his behind in an ignominious heap.

Never mind that, he had more important things to worry about, just now.

"Ramza, how much does it cost to throw a Grand Ball?"

"How should I know? Thousands - tens of thousands, possibly." Ramza looked at him quizzically.

"How much would the Dead Men's back pay and discharge bonuses have come to, do you suppose?" Delita deliberately kept his tone light.

"What? What are you talking about?" Ramza just looked confused now.

"The money! The money they were all owed – _legitimately_ owed – that was never paid to them. The money that originally led to them to form the Corpse Brigade! Not more than a few tens of thousands, I'm thinking!" Delita's tone had lost all semblance of lightness now.

Ramza looked at him and actually paled.

"You mean...?" Ramza trailed off, finally understanding the implications of what Delita had said, but not wanting to put it into words. This whole situation was so dishonourable, put like that.

"I mean... Oh, I'm going to find Zalbaag – I need to talk to _him_ about it!" Delita extricated himself from Juliana and marched out.

Ramza frowningly watched him go, then suddenly jumped up and raced after him.

* * *

Author's Note:

It wasn't until I was writing Delita's introspective vignette a few weeks ago, and I was double checking that what I had written about Wiegraf Folles and his Lieutenants tied in with the information the game gives, that it really struck home that the Corpse Brigade would never have even existed if those men and women had just received what they were owed when they returned home from the war. It makes the entire scenario, including Tietra's death, which in turn inspires all of Delita's extremist actions throughout the rest of the game, completely and tragically unnecessary. The game never makes it clear why this particular unit didn't receive what they were owed, either. Of course, you really wouldn't have this game, if it didn't happen...

As I'm sure you've already worked out, I don't see Delita as an intrinsically bad man, or certainly not a thoroughly evil one - he's far from whiter than white, but I think he's far more interesting and realistic painted in various shades of grey than in pure black (besides, I always saw Dycedarg as the true (human) villain of the piece). At this point, Delita's barely a pale grey, he's possibly even an off-white - but he'll start to nose-dive towards the charcoal end of the scale as the game goes on, of course. I do see the situation where the Corpse Brigade aren't paid and instead decide to start a rebellion as avoidable, which in essence means Tietra's death and so Delita's descent was probably also avoidable.


	14. Chapter 14 - Interrupted Ablutions

**Vignette 14 - Interrupted Ablutions**

_Beoulve Mansion, Eagrose, just after sunrise  
_

"Alma, what the hell? You can_not_ come in here unannounced like this!" Delita sounded genuinely horrified.

He'd been getting washed in his room, when Alma had brazenly slipped in the door, and he had only just got his drying sheet around his bottom half in time to be even slightly decent.

"Oh shut up! I need to talk to you away from Tietra and Ramza." Well that was both interesting and surprising. He tucked the cloth more securely around his waist; he really wasn't about to have to listen to her comments if it slipped.

"I'm _naked_ under this and I _could_ have had someone with me for all you know."

"I saw Juliana slip out of your room not two minutes ago. Were you _entertaining_ more than just her last night?" Alma asked pointedly.

"Jealous?" He asked with an apparently winsome smile.

"Of her and _you_? Don't be so _stupid_!" The tone had enough scorn to wipe the smile right off his face.

Delita wondered why he almost always felt compelled to flirt with Alma when they were alone, it only annoyed her and he nearly always came out the worse from the exchanges. Ah yes, that was it, it annoyed Alma, and annoying Alma was always fun!

"Then are you here as the Lady of the House to tell me that my goings-on are a disgrace to the Beoulve Mansion?" He asked, only half-seriously.

"I _should_, but no - other than to warn you not to get her pregnant, I really couldn't care _less_ what you do in the privacy of your own room."

"Then why, exactly, have you invaded that privacy?" He said, folding his arms over his slightly skinny bare chest.

"As I said, I need to talk to you." She said

"Away from Tietra and Ramza. That's unusual - to say the _least_." He had to admit, he was intrigued... and a little worried.

"Yes. You see, I want you to stop being the overbearing, over-protective, interfering ass that you usually are around Tietra, at least when it's Ramza she's with." Alma said, with a certain amount of rancour.

Delita's eyebrows shot up practically to his hairline, then he frowned ferociously.

"Do go on." He said with a coldly sarcastic politeness, as he took her firmly by the shoulders and turned her to face away from him, then stripped and started to wash again. He wasn't liking what he was hearing and if _she_ was going to come in here uninvited, like this, _he_ was going to get right on with what he had been doing. However, he'd be damned if he was going to let her watch him while he did, it was a good half-a-dozen years since the four of them had all regularly shared a bath of an evening!

"I want your help, in fact." Alma said.

Suddenly her tone changed to something far more reasonable, almost... sweet. He didn't know why she bothered, she knew these sorts of tactics worked on her brothers but never on him.

"The only sure way for a penniless woman in our world to be assured of her future is to make a good marriage, wouldn't you agree?"

"Possibly. I'm listening." His voice still held a certain chill.

"Be sensible, Delita," she said, in a more natural tone, "you are going to have to strive hard for years to make your way in life. I know you probably think you can take care of her, better than anyone else, but if Tietra married well, and to someone who would honour her every bit as much as she deserves, you wouldn't need to worry about her... Now be honest, she isn't ever going to make a better match than marrying into House Beoulve and Ramza's already extremely fond of her."

He thought about it as he began to dress and his voice had regained its normal warmth when he next spoke.

"I take your point, Alma, but we're talking about my best friend and my sister. I care about them too much to want to manipulate them, just like I _thought_ you did." He pulled one of the padded under-tunics, that he wore to protect him from his armour's sharper edges, over his head.

"First off, Tietra would need very little manipulation, I can assure you of that. She _adores_ Ramza, whatever she says out loud on the matter. As for Ramza, you know how clueless he is around girls. Tietra's about the only one he can say a whole sentence to without blushing and stammering." Alma sounded fondly exasperated.

"He's not as bad as _that_. He has female friends from the Akademy - he's friendly with all the girls in our squad, for instance. Admittedly, he does seem oblivious of even the pretty ones who would welcome being more than just friends – Ophellia and Sam, for instance both used to try to flirt with him, to no avail."

Delita grinned, remembering just how insensible Ramza had been, a few months ago, when Ophellia had tried several times to attract him while she and Juliana were walking to lessons with the two boys.

"Exactly! He'll need a push to let him see Tietra as a pretty young woman who could be more to him than a one-time childhood playmate." Alma's tone was very decided.

"Alma, he's _sixteen_, and she's _fifteen_. Neither of them are _close_ to being ready for marriage yet. Neither of _us_ would be ready, and we're both a damned sight more level-headed than either of them!" He said.

"I know that. But, like I said, Ramza's going to need some _steering_, so will the rest of the family. And even when it finally gets through his thick head, it will still probably take Ramza a year or two for him to pluck up the courage to actually _do_ anything about it." Alma turned back around to look at him, presumably having realised that he was decently covered now.

"Besides, the way our family is, he'll be betrothed to someone else within the next couple of years, if we don't do something. Dycedarg was married by twenty, and Zal was engaged at eighteen, even if that didn't work out." Alma said.

"All right. Look, I'll give it some thought over the next few days and talk to you about it when we get back." He gave the deceptively demure-looking blonde girl an amused look as he finished dressing.

"Trying to be just like big-brother Dycedarg, are you?" He said sardonically.

"I'm not a schemer, usually, you _know_ that, Delita." She gave him a cherubic smile, then her face became serious.

"I know you realise that school isn't easy on Tietra. I always keep an eye out for her, stop any bullying, but not being bullied isn't the same as being treated _well_.

"It's made me realise just what a difficult position she's in, and could be in for the rest of her life. As Ramza's Lady, no-one would ever dare to say an unkind word to her again. It suddenly came to me that_ that_ was exactly what needed to happen, when Ramza joked about it the other evening in the nursery. The really important part about it, that I haven't mentioned, is that I am convinced that they will make each other very happy, or I would _never_ have suggested it."

Delita nodded. He appreciated that she was looking out for his sister, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to do this, it smacked of forcing Tietra and Ramza into something, no matter what their feelings were. Though he loyally followed Ramza, as his commander, away from military discipline, he and Alma were the more dominant personalities out of the four of them. If they succeeded, it wouldn't be the first time that Ramza and Tietra had been trammelled into doing what the other two actually wanted... but getting them to marry each other – that was very different! Still...

"You're probably right... So... what can you offer _me_ to help _me_ gain wealth and position? A marriage into House Beoulve can't do as much for a man as a girl, but every little helps." He grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows as he pulled on the last of his clothes.

"Ugh, Delita! That's almost as bad as suggesting I marry _Ramza_. Unlike Tietra and Ramza, I honestly do think of you only as a brother. I mean, I _love_ you but it's, so _very_ much, _not_ in any romantic way. I'm certainly not _crazy_ enough to ever contemplate marrying you. I doubt _any_ woman is _that_ insane! Concentrate on Tietra and Ramza - don't forget that, if this works out, you'll be brother to a Lady Beoulve, that must count for _something_ to help with your ambitions." Alma said.

Delita had always known that Alma was at least as practical about life as he was. Ramza and Tietra were the romantics, the idealists. Even discounting the material gain for Tietra, it almost certainly would be a very good match between them, but there really was no need to rush into things right now. Being a practical person, in the long run, he probably would end up helping Alma with this scheme. He wanted the best for his sister and Ramza and he thought this might be it, though it still worried him that _that_ ought to be for them to decide.

Buckling on his armour, he regarded Alma speculatively. Did the lady protest too much when it came to him?... He doubted that. He thought Alma was being absolutely truthful. She loved him - as the youngest of her _four_ big brothers. However, in some ways they could understand each other better than either would ever be understood by their own closest sibling.

It was a shame, he supposed, that neither of them _was_ interested in the other, that way. Like Ramza and Tietra they could probably be a good match. Like her, though, what love he felt had nothing romantic about it, though she was very pretty and rumour had it that Dycedarg was going to settle a good-sized estate on her as dowry, once she reached her majority. He half-wished that he could be that calculating. He shrugged at that thought, incidentally helping his armour settle into place.

"Well, careful you aren't spotted leaving my rooms or you might end up as my unwilling bride, Alma! Crazy or not." He said.

Alma gave him a wicked grin.

"Dycedarg would probably have you horsewhipped instead. I doubt he'd want _you_ as part of the family, for _real_."

Delita frowned and spoke quietly, seriously.

"The same goes for Tietra, you know."

Though he was being serious now, she was still smiling slightly.

"Maybe not; Tietra's _a lot_ more endearing than you are! I think Dycedarg can be made to come to terms with _her_." Her face turned serious too. "I thought you understood, Delita; Dycedarg and, to a lesser extent, Zalbaag are _why_, if we are going to manage to make this happen, we have to start _now_."

"Seriously, all this intriguing - you _are_ trying to be little Miss Dycedarg, aren't you?" He opened the door and held it wide for her with a mocking little bow.

As she passed through, she thought she'd have a heart attack, when she came face to face with a shocked-looking Ramza, emerging from his own room, next door. Delita also froze momentarily, as he appeared behind her. Then his voice came smooth and convincing.

"Don't worry, Ramza, this is so _very_ much _not_ what it might appear. Alma was up early and happened to see Juliana coming out of my room a while back and she stormed in to tell me that I was never to be so immoral under the roof of Mansion Beoulve ever again. She gave me a real ear-bashing, but we're friends again now. I've apologised to her for my conduct and I also do so now, to you."

Alma glanced at Delita, he looked sincerely contrite. Sometimes the boy worried her; he was such a consummate liar when it suited him. She only had to be glad that the mansion's walls were so thick that there was no reason for Ramza to wonder why he hadn't heard anything of the telling-off she'd supposedly given Delita.

"Good." Ramza said after a second, putting his arm around Alma's shoulders and giving her a quick squeeze, while shaking his head disapprovingly at Delita.

"Alma, is Tietra up?" Delita asked as they walked down the hallway towards the front doors.

"No, but I can wake her, if you want to say goodbye."

He considered for a moment, then shook his head.

"No, let her sleep - we're only going to be gone three or four days. We'll see her when we get back. After all, we really will be relegated to nothing more exciting than guarding the battlements, after that. At that point, all four of us will have all the time in the world to spend together – we'll probably end up heartily sick of one another! Make sure you give her my love, though." Delita bent and pressed a brief kiss on Alma's cheek.

"Give her mine as well." Ramza said, hugging Alma and kissing her other cheek.

* * *

Author's Note:

I wrote this vignette immediately after #3 - the one where the four of them had their "picnic". It seemed to me that Alma was just the sort of girl to stew on what to do about her best friend's crush on her brother and then decide to try to manage their lives for them. She's bossy and interfering, but her heart's in the right place and, well, we could all be a bit extreme in our reactions to things when we were fifteen, after all.

My only real new addition to this is that it used to finish with Ramza's disapproving head-shake outside his bedroom. Delita casually refusing to have Alma wake Tietra to say goodbye, because they'd all be seeing so much of each other very soon, hopefully, adds a subtle poignancy, if you know what is coming - it works for me, anyway.

As I said previously, if you've any suggestions for what you'd like to see in future vignettes, let me know. Other than that, any reviews or constructive criticism are always very gratefully accepted and acted upon wherever possible.


	15. Chapter 15 - Giving Thought

**Vignette 15 - Giving Thought**

_South of the Mandalia Plains, first watch  
_

Argath had first watch, which meant Delita and Ramza had the tent to themselves, for once.

"Why did you suddenly start being so nice to Argath?" Delita asked quietly, as they lay in the darkness. "As far as I've seen, he's still as big an arse as ever."

"The Headmaster." Ramza said. "Something he said made me realise that, whether I like Argath or not, as long as he's attached to the squad, I have to make him welcome and try to integrate him."

Delita was quiet for a moment.

"It's not that easy, you know - not unless Argath's prepared to put in a hell of a lot more effort as well. Plus, the rest of us have all known each other for nearly four years, or three and a half, in my case. It would take more than a couple of weeks for him to integrate. Especially since I'm hardly the only one who thinks he's an arse. I include _you_ in that, if you hadn't already worked that out."

"All right – so I also think he's a snobbish stuck-up arse. So what? Life is more pleasant if we all, at least, make some effort to get along!" Ramza said.

Delita felt like that last statement was aimed squarely at him.

"I wish you'd stop trying to be so damned _nice_ all the time!" He said testily.

"And _I_ wish you wouldn't get so damned irritable!" Ramza shot back in a similar tone.

The both turned on their bedrolls to face away from one another. After a few minutes, Ramza spoke.

"Delita, you and Juli...?" He didn't even know exactly what he wanted to ask. He just knew that as their captain he ought to... No he didn't even know exactly what he ought to do. It was about making an effort to all get along like he'd said to Delita. If they...

"You know, that's really not your business, Ramza." Delita's tone was surprisingly mild. "If it helps, yes I know that, this time, it isn't some casual tumble with a tavern wench and, yes, she says she is making sure she doesn't end up pregnant. Beyond that, this is the end of the discussion." Delita had shocked his friend; usually they talked about everything.

* * *

Delita stared off into the night, fuming gently. Ramza had no right... He'd already _apologised_ to Ramza, the previous morning, for spending a night with Juliana under the roof of Mansion Beoulve. Apologised huh! It _had_ been a necessary diversion, but he didn't like that he'd done it when he felt no remorse and hadn't seen any necessity for an apology. He knew he was being touchy tonight, and that that was part of it. He knew he should apologise again_, _but the unnecessary apology would have to cover _this_ transgression – he wasn't making another.

The whole thing with Juliana was stupidly complicated. While they were alone together, everything was great. The moment Juli started thinking about the situation, it all started to become _far _more complex than he felt it ever should be. They were too young to be thinking about settling down – they were having fun and he liked her an awful lot. Why did she have to make it more complicated than that?

He knew the answer, of course. She'd lost... no, get it right... he'd _taken_ her virginity - that most precious and _saleable _commodity of noblemen's daughters. Not that he'd taken anything without her enthusiastic consent, still... If it somehow became known, she was automatically damaged goods; a girl who had done what she had could never make a "good" marriage... presuming that it _did_ become known. It didn't _have_ to become known, of course, and, in the long run, who knew what might happen between the two of them?

He'd always thought it was ironic the way the older generation of nobles _so_ looked down their noses at people, even the very successful ones, who were "in trade", yet treated their children like something to be bought and sold on the open market. The currency they demanded for them might, more often, be social standing than gil, but a little money, as long as it was "old money" was never rejected either. Poor Juli...

Gods! He should never have touched her! Ramza was right to question him. He might not _feel_ like he had done something wrong but, deep down, he knew he had. He'd wronged her in a way that only marriage could put right and it couldn't be put right by marriage to a near-penniless commoner either... Not that he was ready to make her that offer, even if it would have helped; they were both far too young!

_Hell, hell, bloody hell and damnation! I've been a completely selfish bastard, haven't I? I just need to remember that my **brain **is the organ I need to try using, for once, when it comes to women! Or, if I can't manage that, the least I could do is just stick to the casual damned tavern wenches I mentioned to Ramza._ Those were his last coherent thoughts before falling asleep.

* * *

Ramza was certain that Delita was no more asleep than he was.

Delita was right, of course, it was none of Ramza's business what went on between him and Juliana. Perhaps he should apologise? Delita was also right to question why Ramza was making such an effort to be nice to a boy who wouldn't know decency if it hit him square between the eyes.

The headmaster had made him feel guilty that he hadn't been more welcoming and hadn't encouraged the squad to be the same way, but the headmaster wasn't the one who was having to put up with Argath... Or had it been a trick question – that one about Argath's lack of integration into the squad - "And do you feel that this is his fault or yours?"

At the time, Ramza had seen that as a question designed to make him take responsibility for the "rogue element" that had entered his team but what if it had, instead, been meant to make Ramza think about whether he really _should_ be trying to take responsibility for every little thing?

Had it been meant to make him acknowledge that, even when you were a leader, you couldn't control every aspect of life? Especially those "aspects of life" that were human beings. People had their own flaws, priorities and personalities which no-one but them could fully control, no matter how "exalted" your position. He suddenly wondered if there had been _one_ right answer to that question of the headmaster's.

Was he over-analysing? The headmaster had appeared satisfied with Ramza's answer, and not everything _had_ to be a trick question. Perhaps he had just wanted to prompt Ramza to do his best to resolve the Argath situation.

Did it matter anyway? Tomorrow they'd deal with whoever and whatever they found at this brigands' hideout, then they'd go back to Eagrose. Argath would, no doubt, go back to the Marquis' employ and he, Delita and the rest would find themselves patrolling the battlements of Eagrose Castle for a few days, then, whether or not there was a doubly-damned Grand Ball, they'd go back to the Akademy for a few weeks until they graduated.

Maybe he should ask Delita what _he_ thought? He was reluctant to - it would mean admitting that he kept trying to second-guess himself, which was never a good thing to do as a leader... or was it? Shouldn't one analyse one's own actions for faults so that one could try to avoid them in future?

He so desperately wanted to be a good leader, to be the sort of man his father had been. Was that what made him question himself all the damned time?

He turned over and opened his mouth to tell Delita what an idiot he was being - that he was half-way to driving himself crazy, this evening, and that he needed some sensible advice. Possibly, he instead needed something that would render him unconscious until he stopped questioning his own actions, so that he could get some damned sleep!

He heard a soft snore – the snore of someone who wasn't lying in the dark questioning every little detail of an answer he'd given nearly a week ago to what was probably a throwaway question.

Ramza turned over and did his best to settle himself, and tell himself that this was merely nerves and that these were natural the night before an important battle. It took a while, but he did eventually fall into a light, uneasy sleep.

* * *

Author's Note:

Ramza's suddenly gone a bit neurotic, I know. However, I think it isn't completely out of character for someone who is _so_ desperate to prove himself.


	16. Chapter 16 - A Nose for Trouble

**Vignette 16 - A Nose for Trouble**

_Brigands' Den, around noon, immediately after the battle against Milleuda  
_

Ramza couldn't bring himself to look at Argath, even as he Cured his broken nose.

The nose was not an injury from the fight against the Corpse Brigade but from a punch delivered a minute or so after the severely wounded female Knight had limped away. Oddly, it had not been Ramza or Delita who had delivered the punch, but Hildegarde.

Hildegarde had been quite badly injured during the fight. After Sam had Cured her, she had walked up to Argath, while the others were still looking at him as if he had grown a second head, punched him hard in the face, and walked away again, all without saying a word. Ramza and the other girls had stared after her, shocked, while Delita had begun to grin.

After a moment, Argath exploded, blood dripping from his nose as he demanded indistinctly:

"You're her captaid, Ramza, ared't you supposed to baintaid disciplide better thad that?"

"And if Hildy had, _in fact, _done anything_ wrong_, then I suppose I would have to think about disciplining her." Ramza had answered in a cool, hard voice.

Argath had gaped at him while Delita's grin had taken on a hint of viciousness. Ramza had sighed deeply and cast Cure on their unwelcome guest - the other boy had to be in a fit shape to fight, should they come up against a group of random fiends that afternoon.

"Come on, everyone" he called out to his squad, "let's quickly grab a bite to eat and then head for home."

When Ramza finally brought himself to glance at the other boy, for a moment, to check that the healing had worked, he discovered that it had... sort of. He idly wondered if he should feel any guilt that he had a profound sense of satisfaction that Argath's nose would never be perfectly straight again. He felt not one jot!

* * *

_That evening, encamped on the Southern Mandalia Plains_

Argath spent a fair amount of time, that evening, trying to justify his words and behaviour during and immediately after the battle. He managed to be almost as offensive, while he did that, as he had to the woman, that afternoon.

Delita had tried going after the knight, once they had all got over the shock of what Argath had said, and Hildy's reaction to it. He had, literally, had the Hi-Potion he had tried to give to her, thrown back in his face. Ramza had thought Delita was brooding on that but instead, he had apparently been thinking up a way to get at Argath.

"Ramza, since you're the one whose mother was a Master white mage, you may know the answer to a question I have." Delita said, his voice almost a drawl.

He was lying on the ground by the camp-fire, with his hands linked behind his head, feigning nonchalance.

"If Hildy knocks Argath's teeth down his throat when she punches him _this time_, is there a spell of the Cure family that will regrow them, or does he have to stay all gummy, like someone's great-grandpa, for the rest of his life?"

Hildegard had certainly been eyeing Argath balefully, as if she was thinking about hitting him again, until that question. Much of the tension in the female part of the group drained at that, though, with all four girls trying to hide giggles as Argath looked daggers at them and Delita. He moved so that he was sitting further away from the main group.

"That's enough Delita." Ramza said quietly, sounding more weary than any of the others had ever heard him.

He had earlier sat down by the fire, his head in his hands and hadn't moved since. Delita shot back to a sitting position.

"You'd defend...?" Ramza raised his head and interrupted whatever diatribe Delita sounded like he was beginning.

"I'm defending no-one. Nor am I condoning anyone _goading_ other people, when everyone's already on edge."

"I'm not! I wouldn't..."

"Think about how well we know each other, before you tell me you wouldn't do that, Delita."

"I _despise_ prejudice, Ramza."

"I _know_ that. It's one of your best qualities." Ramza gave a tired half-smile, though he still just wished everyone would shut up including, or perhaps especially, Delita. Delita didn't.

"This whole conflict is being perpetuated because of prejudice. _Their_ side, because they seem to have decided that all aristocrats are the same, and that all must be held accountable for what the minority have done to them. _Our_ side," and there was an odd, bitter note in Delita's voice and a twist to his lips when he said "our", "because _he's_ hardly the only person who thinks that the nobility have a gods-given right to treat peasants however they wish and that it would lower _our_ dignity to try to treat with the Brigade to end this."

Ramza shook his head at that.

"Six months ago, when the Brigade was simply the remnant of the Company of Dead Men we might have treated with them. More recently... no. They're no longer just that few dozen, they've attracted a much larger following, now. A following who are essentially an uncontrollable rabble, baying for the nobility's blood. Would they _all_ abide by any treaty Wiegraf or his remaining Lieutenants agreed to?... And why is it _me_ giving _you _the political lecture for once?" Ramza asked that last with a slight laugh.

When Delita's reply came, it was hesitant and it sounded like he was weighing every word. He was obviously working things out in his head, even as he spoke.

"Because I've been over-simplifying things. I've just been dismissing Wiegraf's followers as the "peasants' revolt" that everyone calls them. But you're absolutely right, most real peasants have subservience far too deeply ingrained to be taking part in this and those that don't are still far better off than they've ever been, since the black death eight years ago. They don't _need_ to rebel.

"It's poor men and women, from towns, especially those with a little education, that _would_ become the main-stay of this sort of rebellion. Those men at Dorter hadn't just moved there, they were _from_ Dorter. I knew that, and yet I didn't really consider the implications. Because of the way this started, I've only been considering it as a rebellion of the ex-Dead Men, as if those following them didn't have much influence on events.

"Gods, what's made me so _stupid_ lately? If _you've_ got a better handle on the situation than _me_..." Delita turned to his friend, full of contrition. "Oh gods, I'm so sorry, Ramza, I really_ really _didn't mean that the way it must have sounded!"

Ramza tried to look offended, then began to grin wryly. After the day they'd all had he was going to make every effort to keep the friction within the group as low as possible. Besides there was a certain amount of truth in what Delita said – he _never_ came close to having the same grip on the political situation as Delita... except today. Today had been a very strange, unpleasant, unsettling day altogether!

"Don't worry about it." He said. "It was something that the headmaster said a few days ago that made me draw those conclusions, you know I don't think about politics without prompting. You can relax, you still take the laurels for cleverness." Ramza's tone might have had, _just a hint_ of sarcasm when he said that last.

Whether or not Ramza had meant that sarcasm as a reproach, Delita felt his cheeks grow warm. He was suddenly glad that, with his olive complexion, it was impossible to notice a blush in light this poor. He noticed Ramza give a jaw-popping yawn.

"I don't know why I'm so tired." Ramza said. "Do I have a watch tonight?"

The question was aimed at Delita, who as the second in command kept the watch rota.

"No, that's part of why you _are_ so tired – you had middle, last night, remember?" Delita then raised his voice, to make sure everyone heard. "It's Ophellia first, Argath middle and I'm on last."

Ramza sat quietly for another minute or two then got up to go to bed. He was half-way to their tent, when he stopped and turned around.

Delita, he saw, had moved so that he was now lying with his head pillowed in Juliana's lap and was talking quietly with her.

"Delita, I need a word." Ramza almost barked out – suddenly the consummate Cadet-Captain. He saw Delita roll his eyes at Juli, then scramble to his feet.

"Yes sir." Delita gave him an infinitely sloppy salute. Ramza, unamused, just took him by the arm to lead him away from the fire.

"Delita, Argath took a watch last night - so let me guess - by _your_ rota, Argath's on middle watch tomorrow night and _every_ night, as long as he's with us, hmm?"

"Well... yes - everyone always hates it - though he always _was_ allocated to middle _tomorrow_..." Delita didn't sound particularly contrite.

"Delita, I know he's a completely insufferable, gormless little _tit_, and after what he said today, I would have been incredibly happy to have been the one who punched him but, as Captain, I couldn't do that. And however much it seems justified, I can't let you give him all the crappy jobs, either. That would be tantamount to bullying." Ramza's face was in shadow, but his voice sounded all but pained as well as slightly disbelieving. It was almost as if he _himself _couldn't quite believe that he was giving Delita an order to ease up on the "little tit".

Delita just gave a heavy sigh and went back to the fire.

"I mixed the watches up. It's tomorrow, that Argath's on middle watch." He called out. "Ophellia's still first, me middle, Juli last." Even though everyone had to know exactly why he'd been forced to correct his "mix-up", he wasn't about to acknowledge that openly.

Dissatisfied with everything that had happened since the fight had begun that morning, Ramza headed for bed, feeling thankful that tomorrow couldn't possibly be as bad as today.

* * *

Author's Note:

Sorry, but I'm not sure why it's Hildegarde, specifically, who punches Argath - mostly I wanted him to get punched, and it seemed less predictable if it wasn't one of the boys who did it. I could come up with the requisite back story, I suppose, but it's a bit late to add it now, I guess.

Oh and in case anyone picked up on it, it just seemed _right_, given the game's nose-less sprites, to make it a broken nose he suffered. I have a rather twisted sense of humour - sometimes it just finds its way out in a peculiar manner. I kind of wish I could work a reference to noses or smelling into every vignette from now on. I should probably try to resist that temptation, though! (I probably shouldn't have given in to it when I named this chapter, either!)


	17. Chapter 17 - The Watcher, Waiting

**Vignette 17 – The Watcher, Waiting**

_Western Mandalia Plains, about four hours' walk from Eagrose, early evening_

"Look up there." Delita said, pointing to the only hill for several miles. "I swear there's someone on choco-back watching us. A woman, I think."

It was about an hour before dusk, and there was the most magnificent sunset behind that hill. If Delita really had seen a woman riding, it could only have been in silhouette. Ramza couldn't see anyone and said so.

"No, she watched us, just for a few moments, then rode off." Delita said.

Ramza didn't say that he thought that Delita must be seeing things, though he did think that. Why would some woman on a chocobo be watching a bunch of knights apprentice?

It was about another quarter of an hour before Ramza got his answer. They saw a chocobo running towards them at full-tilt, a young woman on its back. Shading his eyes against the low sun and squinting, he made out the figure of his sister. What was _she_ doing here? Oh gods, had something happened? Once she was close enough for him to make out her features he could be in no doubt that something was, indeed, very wrong.

He picked up his pace to a near-run and, after a moment, Delita caught him up and they dashed towards Alma.

"Alma, what's the matter? What are you doing here?" Her brother asked her.

"What's happened, Alma? Where's Tietra? Why isn't she with you?" Delita asked at the same time.

Ramza began to help her down off the chocobo but as Delita asked why Tietra wasn't with her, she froze and stared at him with wide eyes for about half a second, then burst into tears. Things were always bad when Alma cried; she prided herself on not being "some silly girlie", as she put it, who cried at the drop of a hat.

Ramza put his arms around her and patted her back, consolingly, as she cried into his shoulder, but Delita hadn't failed to notice that it was his questions and not Ramza's that had prompted the tears. He came up behind her and patted her on the shoulder, as well, but tried to get answers at the same time.

"Alma, please stop crying. This has to do with Tietra, hasn't it? _Please_, tell me what's happened to her."

Argath and the girls caught up with them as Alma took a couple of deep breaths and began to speak, giving a rather rambling narrative, which was occasionally interrupted by small sobs and deep shuddering breaths.

"The Brigade... Corpse Brigade came to the Mansion. After you left, Dycedarg reassigned most of our guards to the Castle itself, they were short-handed... said he feared an attack _there_. That's not where they attacked, though. They came to _our_ house, yesterday, just after Tietra and I got home from school. We were doing our homework; two men just walked into the library and grabbed us.

"We both screamed for help, but Tietra's so small, the one who had her just picked her up and carried her out. I struggled, so the man had to drag me. I kept shouting and shouting and just before we got to their chocos, Zal came and saved me... killed the man. The one who had Tietra had already ridden away, though..." Her voice broke again, and she began to sob in earnest and Ramza once more tried to soothe her.

As he listened, Delita's now-pale face took on a pinched look. As Alma finished her story, his normally dark-brown eyes looked orange-red as the unshed tears in them reflected the sunset, that he was staring, unseeing, towards. Juliana made as if to go to him, but suddenly Alma wrenched herself away from her brother and flung herself at Delita. As she wrapped her arms tight around him she could be heard to say brokenly, several times, "I'm so sorry, Delita, so very very sorry."

Delita had hugged her to him, in an automatic response, but when his voice came it was strange and barely more than a whisper. He looked at Ramza, over Alma's head, as he spoke.

"It's all right Alma. We'll get her back, won't we, Ramza? We _have_ to get her back!"

Ramza, a tear now running down one of his own cheeks, just bit his lip and nodded rapidly.

Alma had buried her face against his chest, still crying, but Delita put gentle fingers under her chin and tilted her face up to look at him.

"Alma, come on, I need you to stop crying and _think_. Does anyone know where they've taken her?" He asked in a gentle, yet urgent, voice.

"No... I _don't_ _know_." She quavered. "That's why I came. Dycedarg was attacked and badly injured." She looked over at her brother. "Don't worry, the medics say he'll be fine, he just needs a few days bed-rest, but he and Zal won't tell me _anything_. I don't know if they think I'd try to ride off on my own and rescue her _by myself_." She made an indistinct noise that could have been either a strangled laugh or a sob.

Turning her face back to look up at Delita, she said:

"I thought if I could get you to hurry home... I thought, if _you_ asked – you're her _actual_ brother, they'd _surely_ tell you whatever they know."

Another thought had finally penetrated Ramza's worry for Tietra. His brain had finally processed what she'd said about riding off on her own... He took his sister by the shoulder, pulled her away from Delita and turned her to face him.

"So only _yesterday_ members of the Corpse Brigade were at our home, they broke in and, by the sound of it, tried to kill our Lord brother. They kidnapped Tietra, damned near kidnapped _you_ and today you thought you'd come out for a _nice_ ride, _alone, _when some of them may be still roaming the local countryside. Are you as _stupid_ as that makes you _seem_?" His voice, as well as his anger, rose as he spoke.

Even if the increase in volume hadn't made it obvious just how infuriated he was becoming, using even a very mild swear-word, like "damned", with women present, was a sure indication that Ramza was near the end of his tether.

Alma's bottom lip began to tremble again. Ramza noticed it and his face seemed to harden all the more.

"Don't you dare threaten more tears to try to get out of this, Alma Beoulve, that won't work on me right now, I'm far too angry with you!"

With her emotions as fragile as they were, that, of course, simply made Alma start to cry again. Delita stepped forward and put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned against him, still weeping gently.

"Don't Ramza, you're the one _making_ her cry. She's only been a bit thoughtless because she's so worried..."

"A _bit_ thoughtless? She's been a _lot_ foolish and reckless!" He took a deep breath - it only calmed him a little. He spoke to Alma again, much more quietly, though it was through clenched teeth this time.

"Did you at least let someone know where you were going?"

"I left a note." She said in a small voice, not meeting his eyes.

"A note – Zal and Dycedarg are going to _go berserk_! Once we have Tietra back and Dycedarg is well enough, I am going to have a long talk with him about getting you the strictest, most dragon-like duenna anyone has ever _heard_ of! One who won't let you out of her sight – not that I think any poor woman would have a hope in _hell_ of stopping _you_ from running amok!

"Now, you get back on that choco..." He trailed off, having turned towards the beast she had ridden. "You brought _Vesta_... of all the irresponsible..." He trailed off. "Why _not_ Nemea? Nemea's _yours_, for the gods' sake!"

Vesta was Tietra's chocobo. Tietra was a couple of inches shorter and more slightly built than Alma, and hence her chocobo was rather smaller than Alma's. Vesta was also still a fairly young, skittish bird and she was speedy but had terrible stamina. There was no chance that she could run all the way back to Eagrose that night and, unless the bird ran, it would be hours after dark before Alma got there.

"Nemea has a bruised hock, and it's not like I could just take one of Zal or Dycedarg's chocobos, without their permission." Her voice trembled a little but she didn't begin to cry again, as she said. "It wasn't as if Tietra could _use_ Vesta, so I asked the stable lad to saddle _her_, of course." Alma said. After a few moments, she began to look slightly mutinous, now that she had finally stopped weeping and was beginning to feel indignation about Ramza's treatment of her.

Ramza's temper was starting to cool, anyway. He put a hand to his head and stared off into the distance for a few moments, looking pained. His voice was low and while it was strained and still held something like a tinge of anger, that anger no longer seemed to be directed at his sister.

"Tietra... dear gods!... Alma, don't you understand that if they took you as _well_... I can't stand the thought that _one_ of you... if something were to happen to _both_ of you..." He sighed. "I'm sorry I shouted, but you _should_ have stayed safe at home."

"I know, I realise that now. I'm sorry, I just didn't think... I needed to _see_ the two of you. Zal's tried to be reassuring, but it's not the same." Ramza sighed again, then nodded, giving her a small smile that didn't quite touch his eyes - worry getting in the way of warmth. He understood Alma only too well. Had Tietra been taken when _he_ were the only other one of the four of them at home, probably one of the first things he'd have done, was seek out Alma and Delita.

"Oh why did Nemea have to go lame just _now_?" He asked no-one in particular. "She's sturdy, I could have sent you straight back. You'd have got home after dark, but Delita or I could had ridden her with you – that should have kept you safe and whichever of us it was could have found out any details our brothers won't tell you_,_ _tonight_!

"Lets walk again." He said. "There's less that an hour until full dark, but we're on the edge of the woods and there's no moon tonight, so we'll have to stop soon, but even a few minutes of walking this evening is a few closer to Eagrose in the morning. Will you ride, Alma, or do you want me to lead Vesta?"

Alma went to her mount and took the reins, saying she'd lead her. He let her, moving to her side to walk with her. Delita came and silently walked on the other side of the chocobo, staring at the ground as he walked and looking as if his mind was very far away.

As they continued, Ramza tried to find out if there was anything else his sister hadn't told them. However, it appeared that her, seemingly slightly incoherent, retelling had actually been pretty accurate - she could add nothing of real import.

* * *

A couple of hours later Juliana was trying very hard not to feel jealous. It was clear that Alma was both distraught about Tietra and worried about Delita, so she was seeking to comfort, and to be comforted by, the only person who felt Tietra's abduction even more deeply than she did. But, damn it, the girl had been glued to Delita's side ever since they had made camp – almost literally!

She knew - she'd always known - that Ramza, Delita and their sisters were extremely close. Unusually for the Akademy, each of the two boys wrote to their sister at least twice a week. Delita had once told her that they took it in turns to write to their own sister every other day because a letter to one of the girls was the same as a letter to both. She wrote to her own family two or three times a month. That was fairly typical of the other Akademicians in their year. Certainly, once they they had completed first year, it became uncommon to write much more than weekly.

She knew, from the look that Ophellia was giving her, that her glowering face had not gone unnoticed. Ophellia nodded pointedly to the far side of the camp from Delita and his newly acquired shadow. Juliana got up and followed her friend into the night.

"You need to stop it, Juli." Ophellia said very seriously. "You've sat for the last hour with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp! His sister's been taken by people who could be doing _anything_ to her. He's clinging to someone familiar who is as good as another sister to him. So _please_ don't make any comments like the one you did in the Siedge Wield a couple of weeks back, or I may have to do a Hildy on you."

Juliana put a hand to her nose and looked a little indignant, but then she began to grin delightedly at her friend, remembering the incident the previous day. Her smile soon dropped as she glanced back at Delita, who was still sitting staring glassily into the fire, an arm loosely around a tired Alma. Alma's head was resting in the crook of his shoulder, her eyes shut.

"I know I'm being a terrible bitch, it's just... he's been... odd with me for a couple of days now, Ophellia - blowing hot and cold. I... I don't think I'd be feeling _this_ jealous if I was more sure of him." She looked back at them, annoyance showing again. "Shouldn't Ramza be bothered by the pair of them being like that; he _is_ her brother!" She burst out, then bit her lip and looked at the ground, when Ophellia gave her a flat stare.

"If Delita starts kissing or..." Ophellia shrugged, "I don't know... groping her, then you, and possibly Ramza, _may_ have something to worry about – having his arm around her like that, in these circumstances, is nothing to get so distressed about, I'm _certain_!" Juliana only nodded and headed back to the fire-side.

Twenty minutes later, she was glad, nevertheless, when Ramza declared that they should all probably get an early night, as he wanted them ready to march as soon as the sun breached the horizon. As Alma was to sleep in the girls' tent, which effectively removed Delita's new favourite thing to cuddle from his grasp, Juliana was more than happy to acquiesce to Ramza's order.

* * *

Author's Note:

Well this is kind of the beginning of the end, I suppose, the main parts of the story of Chapter 1 of the game are almost all in place now. By the end of the next one, Argath will be gone, and that'll probably be the last time we see Alma for a great long while too. (Maybe not all _that_ long – though I'm not going to elaborate on that here.)

Edit/Addition: It was pointed out to me, in a review by darrelodin, that it was surprising that Argath didn't say anything, in reaction to Delita and Alma. That didn't surprise me, because I never intended to have Argath _say_ anything here as I always had plans to deal with his reaction at the beginning of the next vignette (he's saving it up, in order to be extra unpleasant). What did surprise me was that I had totally forgotten to include the couple of "odd looks" that Argath was supposed to have directed at Delita and Alma during the course of this. Once I knew what I wanted to do with this vignette, I fully intended to put them in, then I got caught up in telling the story and forgot. Just after I got that review, I actually went back and tried to work out where I could just casually add Argath giving these looks, but I couldn't find a place to add them that didn't just scream "artificial addition!" Therefore, they didn't happen. So, imagine them happening wherever you like, and go straight on to the next vignette where Argath gives Ramza his (belated) reaction to this!


	18. Chapter 18 - After Delita's Fury

This picks up right at the end of the cut-scene "Delita's Fury", where Delita begins to almost strangle Ramza then punches Argath (everyone should always punch Argath, as soon as they see him, in my opinion). Having said, when I started this, that I wouldn't rehash cut-scenes, I'm doing just that with the first lines that Argath and Ramza say (the only real problem with that is that my version of Ramza, since he doesn't do pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue, should be saying something like "Leave! Now!" instead of "Begone!", but never mind). After that, it's all original stuff, just as usual.

* * *

**Vignette 18 - After Delita's Fury**

_Eagrose, Beoulve Mansion, around noon  
_

Once Ramza was reasonably certain that Delita would not attack Argath again, he cautiously let him go, though he stayed tensed to grab him again. A moment before, Delita had punched Argath so hard that the blond boy had landed on his back on the front steps of the Mansion, blood flowing freely from a split lip. Thankfully, with nothing more than a parting word of scorn for Argath, Delita stalked off.

Ramza, fuming, had then told Argath, for the second time, to get out of his sight. The other boy did not. Instead, after getting to his feet he turned to Ramza with an inscrutable smirk.

"The Brigade makes its base at Ziekden. Your Lord Brother told me himself. You've no hope of breaching the fortress from the fore. Their defences are too strong. A rear assault is your only chance. Best of luck, my soft-hearted friend. You'll need it."

"Begone!" Ramza said, close to punching the other boy himself.

Argath walked a few paces, stopped and made an obviously exaggerated shrug, then half-turned to face Ramza again.

"Of course, after what I saw last evening, I'd be more concerned for my _own_ sister, were I you. Now _there's_ a fortress that I think it would take very little effort for your low-born friend to breach." He gave an unpleasant laugh. "That's assuming he hasn't already, of course!

"Then again, I suppose the idea of further pollution to the blood of the Beoulves isn't likely to bother _you_. From what I can gather, what would another bastard of even more impure blood be to this, once great, House? It's not as if they aren't already used to concealing the existence of two, is it? A base-born bastard birthed of a base-born bastard - is there a word for one of those, I wonder?" Having finally delivered the insults he'd been contemplating for the whole of the previous evening, Argath's smirk turned decidedly self-satisfied.

The slur on his sister was almost the final straw. Ramza made as if to grab for the other boy's throat, then restrained himself, just before his fingers found purchase. He balled his hands into tight fists and slowly returned them to his sides.

"Were I you, Argath, I'd leave now! Otherwise, I'm likely to do something that will make the punch Delita gave you will feel like a soft caress, in comparison!" As he said that, Ramza's voice shook with the effort he was making not to give in and respond with violence.

Argath's face grew even more smug, before he did, finally, leave. Ramza watched the other boy swagger nonchalantly away and wondered why he hadn't just given Argath a damned good hiding while he had the chance.

* * *

When upset, Delita was, more often than not, to be found in the stables, so that was where Ramza headed to look for him. When he found him, Delita had his arms around his chocobo's neck, his face so close to the bird that his nose touched the soft feathers. Ramza thought he must be crying, but when he touched the other boy's shoulder gently, and Delita whipped around, his eyes were dry.

Ramza and Alma had both wept for Tietra, but the closest he has seen Delita come to it were the unshed tears, sitting in his eyes, the previous evening. In some ways that was more worrying. Ramza knew that Delita was still bottling his feelings up. When he occasionally did that, they still found their way out eventually – often explosively. Yes, certainly explosively, Ramza thought, unconsciously touching his still-sore neck.

"For whatever reason, Argath decided to tell me that Dycedarg told him that the Brigade seem likely to make for Ziekden with Tietra. We have to decide what to do." He said.

"All we have to do is _go_!" Delita said, turning to stride towards the tack room. Ramza grabbed his arm to halt him.

"I'm not saying we shouldn't go, Delita, but we need to think this through and we need to make preparations. I need you to help me, though - you're better at planning. First of all, we need to decide whether we should even trust Argath that the Brigade are at Ziekden. After what he said - including the _vile_ things he said after you left - I don't trust that he spoke a word of truth."

"It's simple, Ramza, we just go to Dycedarg and Zal, ourselves, and _ask_." Delita said, sounding as if he was speaking to someone with less mental capacity than one of the chocobos.

"They'd just order us not to go. Neither of them would tell us, if they got even a hint that we'd try to rescue her ourselves." Ramza said quietly.

Delita sighed deeply and closed his eyes for a moment.

"Then we just go to Ziekden. It's the only lead we have. Besides, an arsenal like that is very defensible, it makes sense for them to use it." He headed again for the tack room again, this time with Ramza following.

"That's what I think, as well. We'll have to be very careful, though. No casting Fire; the whole thing is, basically, one huge powder magazine." Ramza said thoughtfully, a troubled expression on his face at the thought of the potential for disaster.

Delita shrugged at that.

"I'm no mage, so that's not an issue for me. So we can go_..._ _now_?" He gestured to the door with the reins he now held in his hand. Ramza held up a hand as if to halt him.

"Should we ask the girls to come along? We haven't been directly ordered _not _to go, but then again, we are supposed to be beginning our guard duty in the morning, so not being here to do it will probably count as disobeying orders. It might be enough to have all six of us expelled, our future careers destroyed. I don't care about that for myself," he hastened to add, "but the four of them barely know Tietra..." Delita interrupted.

"I don't know! I can't think about all of this! I just want to _go_ and try to get my sister back!"

"I _know_! Look, let's go and have a quick word with the girls, then we leave - whether or not they decide to come with us."

"It's a delay we don't need Ramza!" Yet even as he said that, Delita hung the reins back on the wall, with a deep sigh.

"For all we know, every last remnant of the Brigade is there, Delita – Dycedarg said nearly two dozen of the leaders are left. I worry that six of us isn't nearly enough for that, but I'm damned sure two won't be. Quick won't necessarily get her back, better-planned might! _Please,_ Delita! Help me help Tietra! If we're going to get her back she needs both of us to _focus_!" As soon as he'd said that, Ramza could almost see Delita taking himself in hand, trying to make himself think about the practical aspects of the rescue.

"All right, all right! I'll go and find Alma and see if she can arrange for provisions for a couple of weeks, just in case it takes longer than expected. You go and talk to the girls..." His face took on a far-away look for a moment, then he seemed to come back to himself. "You're right, we have to ask them if they are prepared to do this, not order them. I know it's _my_ sister we're talking about, but I'm too het up to do it right. I'll be better doing the practical stuff like the food, the chemists' supplies and sorting out clean clothes and bed rolls." As he spoke, Delita rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, as if he was tired - he probably was, neither of them had got much sleep the night before.

"If I stick to the practical stuff, I can probably manage to focus a little, at least." He continued, wearily.

"Delita, I know Tietra is _your _sister, but you know I love her, as much as you do, don't you? Come hell or high water, we will get her back!" Ramza said quietly but vehemently. He gripped his friend's shoulder for a moment, in a wordless gesture of comfort and support, then he turned to head back to the house. As he reached the stable door, Delita's voice stopped him.

"Ramza, wait. I know Dycedarg's your brother but, truthfully_,_ what do you think about what Argath said about him not being willing to hold back the army for the sake of one common girl." Delita's voice was unnaturally empty of emotion.

Ramza turned back, his face full of doubt.

"Dycedarg said that Tietra was like a sister, that he wouldn't abandon her." His voice, like his face, was not confident.

"Ramza, _please_. Now is not the time to thoughtlessly toe the Beoulve family line. With everything you know of your brother, do you believe him?" Delita's voice was pleading, he so clearly wanted reassurance. Ramza tried his best to be both reassuring and honest.

"This is a military operation and Zalbaag is now the General, not Dycedarg. I honestly believe that what Dycedarg _said_ he feels for Tietra, Zalbaag truly does. I'm confident that Zal will do everything humanly possible to secure her safety before the final assault – absolutely everything he would, had it been Alma that was taken, not Tietra. However, if we can come at the fortress from the rear and get her out first, then so much the better. It will make things much easier for Zal, too."

Delita hadn't missed the fact that Ramza had essentially sidestepped the question about Dycedarg, yet what he had said was true. Besides, how much control over military matters could a civilian like Dycedarg have? Especially a civilian who was currently bed-ridden. It was also completely true that Zalbaag made little distinction in the way he treated Alma and Tietra - he usually showed an equal amount of affection for both. Ramza surely had to be right in what he said about Zalbaag, Delita thought.

In the case of Tietra's kidnapping and the operation against the Corpse Brigade, thank the gods that it _was_ Zalbaag in charge, not Dycedarg, Delita told himself. He tried to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that said that whenever Zalbaag was nominally in charge of something, you always found Dycedarg pulling his strings behind the scenes. He shook his head. Surely that was an exaggeration? Zalbaag was more than just Dycedarg's puppet and military mouthpiece... wasn't he?

Though Delita had little regard for religion, he suddenly found himself praying - praying that he was wrong to be so doubting of the elder Beoulves. He prayed that Tietra was still alive and unhurt and that, even if Zalbaag and his whole army couldn't get her out safely, that he and Ramza could find a way to work a miracle.

He forced his mind away from his sister, trying only to think of the mundane aspects of preparing for this expedition.

* * *

Alma was, apparently, in Dycedarg's sick-room. Delita knocked briefly and went in. He frowned when he saw her sitting by Dycedarg's bed, working demurely on some embroidery. It appeared that Dycedarg was dozing. He beckoned to Alma and retreated to the outer chamber.

"Embroidery?" He said, in a low incredulous voice, as she followed him out. Even as upset and distracted as he was, this was so out of the ordinary that he had noticed and couldn't help but comment on it. She gave a heavy sigh.

"Dycedarg insisted, after my "little escapade" yesterday, that I stay within sight of his bed all day and do something _ladylike._" She said the last word as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

"I'll try to remember to call you "my lady", then. Anyway..." He shook his head rapidly, as if to clear it. "We need your help. It's too complicated to go into the whys and wherefores but Ramza and I, and probably the girls, are going to try to rescue Tietra ourselves." He trailed off warily, thinking he understood that look in her eye. Sure enough she said, pretty much, exactly what he expected.

"Let me come too. I won't be any bother and I can make myself useful, I promise. I'm good at that Aegis spell that Elder Simon taught us at Orbonne – that could be incredibly helpful for fights."

"And how many times could you cast it, during a fight?" He asked, knowing, full well, that the answer was once.

She just scowled at him, not replying. He went on, implacably.

"Alma, we don't have time for an argument - I want to be gone within the hour. To do that, we'll need field rations for at least ten days for six people. I came to you because I was hoping you could sweet-talk Cook into getting someone to put them together for us. You _know_ she chases me out of the kitchens every time she sees me."

"I know she _used_ to - "Grubby little boys who dip their fingers into bowls should have them cut off!" - that was quite some time ago. You're really rather tall now, Delita, and not _particularly_ grubby at the moment - I doubt she'd be saying that these days!" She could see his impatience. "All right, I'll go and ask her... Six, not seven? Argath isn't...?"

"No!" He cut her off, his voice rising. "Argath won't be sullying himself, helping us to rescue a girl of such _common blood_ who ought to be _licking his boots_!" His tone made it clear he was quoting the other boy. "We're well rid of that despicable little worm, I can assure you!"

Alma sighed, shook her head and reached out to gently touched one of his fists, which he had unconsciously clenched.

"Hush, you'll wake Dycedarg, and once he's awake, you'll get no help; I'll have to go back and get on with my _embroidery_! And try to forget about Argath; he isn't worth a moment of you time, not under these circumstances. I'll go and speak to Cook... but, Delita, I was _serious_ about wanting to come."

"I know you were, and you can't." Was his succinct reply. When she looked mulish, he elaborated.

"It's like what Ramza said, last night, about it being bad enough that one of you is in danger. I can't stand the thought of what might be happening to Tietra, if you were both in danger..." He shook his head. "Please Alma, just stay here, where you are relatively safe." She looked him full in the face for a moment as if trying to read him, then sighed again.

"All right." Was all she said before she briefly touched his hand again and turned away to head to the kitchens.

Alma slipped out of the room, Delita following a moment later. As he emerged, he heard her speaking, her voice cold.

"No, Argath, you can't go in - he's _sleeping_. He needs rest - medics' orders." She crossed her arms across her chest, defensively, and took a step back. Delita could easily see that Argath had been standing far too close for her comfort.

Argath nodded at Alma, and opened his mouth to speak, until he saw Delita. Coming up behind Alma, Delita laid his hands lightly on her shoulders. It was meant as nothing more than a supportive, protective gesture, but from the derisive, knowing expression on Argath's face, he took it as... something else. Ignoring Argath, other than to give him a short disdainful look, he briefly squeezed Alma's shoulders and told her that he and Ramza would see her again, before they left.

He made sure that she was walking away from Argath, towards the kitchens, before he headed in the opposite direction to check on their supplies of Potions and Phoenix Downs. That little scene had added a vague worry for Alma, who was going to be left behind with Argath still in the house, to Delita's already over-burdened mind.

* * *

Author's Note:

Given what Argath is shortly going to do, I'm kind of right there with Ramza on not being able to believe that I didn't let him give Argath the beating he so richly deserves. However, I decided that if Ramza's just seen (and felt) Delita - usually the more cool-headed one - lose it completely, he'd feel the need to make an extra effort to keep himself under control.

I originally intended each of these to be pretty short - when I began to post these, I conceived the idea of them being scenarios that could be read in five minutes during a coffee break, or similar - yet the word-count is gradually creeping up. I'm not sure if I'm happy about that, or not. If anyone reading this feels strongly, that shorter is better than longer, or vice versa, do let me know.


	19. Chapter 19 - Give a Little Whistle

This is another one that comes after a cut-scene, as you'll see:

* * *

**Vignette 19 - Give a Little Whistle  
**

_Eastern Mandalia Plains, early evening  
_

Ramza called a slightly early halt that evening, knowing everyone was exhausted from having pushed themselves incredibly hard for the last couple of days. They were near to where they had made camp the very first night they had left Gariland for Eagrose - which now seemed a lifetime ago. The boys, falling back on the sense of routine, which allowed them to work without thought, had done their share of camp chores before Delita had suddenly stridden away, without a word, up to a small rise which overlooked the part of the plains that ran to the Magick City.

On top of the raised ground was the derelict remains of a shepherding hut, or perhaps it had been an isolated small-holding, though it was barely more than a couple of low limestone walls, now. With the increase in monstrous, fiend-like beasts that populated these plains, it seemed unlikely that sheep would ever be able to graze here again. Delita had sat on one of the rocks, one knee pulled up to his chest, looking absently at the sky.

Ramza had gone to join him after a minute or two and the four girls kept throwing glances in their direction, watching the two distant boys talking.

"For once, I wish we had run up against a bunch of panthers and goblins on the Plains today." Juliana said with a sigh, "I think it would have done Delita some good to have laid about himself with a sword rather than brooding – even if it just stopped him doing it for a few minutes. Ramza too, I imagine." The three other girls just nodded. Juliana was pacing back and forth next to the fire, clearly itching to go and try to give what comfort she could to Delita.

"I'd leave things to Ramza, Juli." To her surprise it was Sam and who had spoken – she was usually the quietest. "I have cousins who are identical twins and, as inseparable as they are, I swear that they aren't any closer than those two." Samantha gestured at the low hill where the boys were.

Suddenly, a slight breeze blew from the boys' direction and the girls all looked at one another, confused, as a raspy tuneless whistling noise reached their ears.

* * *

Ramza kept whistling on his piece of grass long after he had any desire to continue doing so, simply because he couldn't think of anything to say to Delita that would help. Whatever Delita might say, both boys knew only too well that Tietra, as a prisoner of the Corpse Brigade, would _not _be watching the sunset, like them_. _Prisoners, as a rule, were not allowed the freedom to stroll around, contemplating the beauties of nature.

If, when they reached her, the worst that had happened to her was that her hands had been kept bound and she had been drugged into insensibility, as the Marquis Elmdore had been, then both boys knew they would have a lot to be thankful about. Some of the things that might happen to a young female hostage did not bear to be thought about, at all.

Unfortunately, Delita was, apparently, thinking about them anyway. Ramza heard a hitch in the whistling coming from his friend and then it stopped altogether. Turning to look at him, Ramza saw Delita's brimming eyes overflowing and his shoulders beginning to shake. Delita had always cried silently. Ramza remembered the first time he had seen that, the day Delita and Tietra had come to live at Beoulve Manor.

In a way, it had been sheer fluke that his mother had been at home that summer, he remembered. She had been unwell herself, though certainly not with the Black Death, in the early part of the campaign season and had come back from the Ordalian border country where she and his father were serving officers – he the general, she content to remain a mere captain in the medical corps.

As the plague had swept the Beoulve lands, as it had with so much of Western Ivalice that summer, his mother had worked herself ragged trying to help where she could. However, she was sensible and would only treat those few who had survived the main illness and were thought to no longer be contagious – no-one knew of a way to treat the illness at its height and, besides that, a dead medic was no good to anyone.

Ramza and Alma had been confined to their country Manor House. It was a huge building, and one which they didn't know well, since the family mostly lived in the Mansion in Eagrose proper. Two children could spend weeks exploring the enormous house, but even so, they had longed for something new to divert their interest.

Though it was not exactly a "diversion", the change in their dull confined lives had come in the shape of Tietra and Delita. Their mother and Ramza and Alma's had grown up on neighbouring farms and had been friends when they were girls. Therefore, when Cyndra Heiral, her husband and their youngest child all died of the Black Death, Lady Merissa had felt she could not abandon the older children to the doubtful care of the already over-burdened parish. Hence, she decided to bring them home to the Manor, with the idea that they would be companions and playmates to her own children, who were much the same age.

When Lord and Lady Beoulve were away with the army, Ramza and Alma would spend a couple of months, over the summer, living on the Lugria farm with their grandparents, while their governess went home to see her family. Therefore, they had met Delita and Tietra before, when they two little dark-haired children had been visiting their own grandparents, a couple of summers before the Black Death had hit.

Alma and Tietra had played nicely together from the start - probably helped, in no small part, by the fact that five-year-old Alma had impulsively given the four-year-old Tietra one of her dolls, the first time they had met. That same day, Ramza and Delita, six- and almost-six-years-old, had ended up trying to beat each other black and blue, over something neither had ever been able to remember afterwards, and had come to _loathe_ the very sight of each other, doing everything they could to avoid one another for the remainder of the Heirals' few days at their grandparents' farm.

By the autumn when he was eight, when Delita and Tietra had come to live at the Manor, Ramza's recollection of the other boy had faded from loathing to something between dislike and indifference. However, his mother had warned both of her own children, before she had left in the carriage to collect the little Heirals, that she expected them to be extremely nice to the other two, as their parents had died less than a week before and on top of that, everything at the Manor would be new and strange to them.

It had been later than expected when their mother had arrived back with the other two children. In fact, Ramza and Alma had already been put to bed by their nurse. Ramza, for the first time that he could recall, was not sharing a room with his sister – of course he was eight_, _that was really too old to share with a _girl_, even Alma. However, that didn't mean he wanted to share with that Delita boy!

He'd been half asleep when his nurse had ushered the other little boy into his room. She'd efficiently stripped him out of his clothes and dressed him in one of Ramza's nightshirts, then briskly tucked him into the bed that had been Alma's until so recently. When Ramza had begun to speak he'd been told firmly to hush and go back to sleep. Nurse was kindly in general but rather brusque and was a complete martinet when it came to bedtimes.

After she had left Ramza had lain still and quiet for a couple of minutes until he heard movement in the bed across from him. He looked over. Delita was sitting in the bed now with his knees pulled tightly to his chest, his face resting on them. Ramza saw his shoulders were shaking - he was crying silently.

Just as he had on that night eight years ago, Ramza went to sit next to Delita, this time on a rock rather than a bed, and laid a hand flat on the other boy's upper back. One of Delita's foibles was that he didn't like people – anyone but Tietra and sometimes Alma – to offer him too much comfort when he was crying, but from years of experience, growing up, Ramza knew that this simple touch would be acceptable.

"I just wish I knew that she was all right." Delita's voice was a choked whisper.

Since that was his own main wish right now, Ramza had no words of comfort that wouldn't be blatantly empty and trite, so instead he just gently patted the other boy's back a couple of times, staring up at the now darkening sky.

Eight years ago Delita's only words had been a choked whisper as well, though that had been a mournful "Ah want me mam!" Ramza hadn't known what to say then, either. Saying that they would go and find his own mother hadn't seemed quite the right thing, Delita barely knew her, so he had made the only suggestion that had presented itself to his mind.

"Shall we go and find your sister?" He'd asked tentatively.

The other boy had nodded, face still buried against his knees, so Ramza had taken one of his hands and drawn him from the bed and out of the room. Ramza had led him, still weeping softly, into the girls' bedroom.

Instead of the small beds that the boys' room had, the girls had one large bed. Ramza didn't know why they didn't each have their own, at the time, though now he knew that high-born girls would share a bed with another girl or woman until they were married, as it was supposed to guarantee their chastity for their future husband. It was even done that way at the Akademy. Even after they had moved out of the nurseries, the two girls had continued to share a suite of rooms and a bed. It was really little wonder that, even though they were so very different in personality, Alma and Tietra were so very close – they usually spent every minute of every day and every night together.

The following morning, Nurse had found the boys' beds empty and all four of them in the girls' big bed, piled together haphazardly, rather like a litter of sleeping kittens. She hadn't been too pleased with them. After Lady Merissa had spoken sternly to her, though, the four of them had been allowed to pile into the big bed this way any time that either Tietra or Delita had become particularly upset about their family around bedtime over the next few months, as it seemed to help.

Ramza remembered that in the weeks following the death of his own mother, a little over two years later, the four of them had taken to sometimes sleeping together in the big bed again. At that time, he finally understood why it had nearly always been when they were getting ready for bed that the other two had become so upset about their parents' deaths. When you were tired at the end of the day, but you weren't yet quite ready to sleep, that tended to be when you had time to think about things and the people you had lost. It was still often as he was lying in bed at night that his thoughts would stray to his parents, though the grief had subsided to a point where he seldom felt it as more than a dull ache.

Gods! He had to stop thinking about death and grief – that was not a good thing to do in these circumstances. Tietra was _not_ dead, they were going to rescue her and everything was going to be fine! Since Delita had fallen to pieces this evening, he could not afford to. Somehow, that was how this sort of thing worked between them.

* * *

Author's Note:

A very brief note, just to ask if anyone reading this can see any special significance to the whistling on grass theme? I just don't get why they would have chosen that to tie various cut-scenes together. Since the game is Japanese, I wondered if there might be a symbolism I don't know about, since I'm not all that familiar with the minutiae of Japanese culture.

As an aside, I don't get how they all do it one-handed, when I was a kid we used to do that by sandwiching a piece of grass between our thumbs and blowing through them. Totally irrelevant, I know, but never mind...


	20. Chapter 20 - Means and Ends

This took a while to post because I just didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do with Ramza and Delita next. I'm sick of being depressing, but at this stage of the tale I've been struggling to work out how to do anything else. I'm not sure that this one is my finest piece, but I hope it doesn't disappoint completely:

* * *

**Vignette 20 - Means and Ends**

_15 miles North of Gariland, Two Trees Tavern, evening  
_

They'd made only the briefest stop in Gariland, that afternoon, to pick up a few fresh provisions, the sort they had run out of because they wouldn't keep for more than a couple of days. More than one face had been turned with troubled eyes in the direction of the Akademy as they had passed the end of the street that contained its main gates. Ramza hadn't tried to deceive the girls about the fact that they might very well be considered to be disobeying orders if they came along with him and Delita, but that couldn't stop them worrying. Ramza had noted it but hadn't said anything.

That evening, they had found themselves lodgings in a roadside tavern about fifteen miles north of Gariland. It wasn't an inn exactly, actually the most accurate term was probably "hedge tavern", but it had a dormitory in the loft and since it was bucketing down outside they were very grateful to have even that draughty roof over their heads. They were the only guests for the night too, so for all the dormitory could hold at least a dozen people they didn't have to share.

The two boys had claimed the beds nearest the rickety stairs while the four girls claimed those at the other end of the room. Most of their things were piled haphazardly on the six unused beds between them, and there was a moth-eaten curtain hanging in the middle of the room which allowed the girls to shut off their end of the room from the boys, so that they could all change out of their damp clothes in a modicum of privacy.

Ramza sat himself on the end of Delita's bed as he pulled his boots back on after changing.

"Did you see Ophellia's and Sam's faces as we passed the school today?" He asked very quietly.

"Yes. We should probably tell all four of them that we won't blame them if they want to leave and head back to school. I think it was probably wrong of us to even ask them to come." Delita said in a similar undertone. Though Delita had continued to display signs of worry that day, he had been significantly less preoccupied than he had been for the last couple of days. The bout of tears the evening before seemed to have helped clear his mind.

"You're right, of course, but if they go, it may make it a lot more difficult for us to successfully get Tietra out." Ramza said, consciously playing devil's advocate. He watched Delita chew on his lip for a few seconds.

"It's not as if any of them even know Tietra that well. I still think we should tell them to leave if they want to. We shouldn't encourage them to go, though." Delita said. "I'll speak to them over supper; she's my sister."

* * *

In the end, the girls had all agreed to stay, but Ramza wondered if, on reflection, he should have been the one to speak to the girls - Delita had not done it in quite the same way Ramza would have wished him to. Delita had told the girls how grateful he was that they had all chosen to come with them and how marvellous it was to have such loyal, supportive friends. He'd let that sink in for a few seconds and then said that, however, he and Ramza had come to realise that they might not have been completely fair in asking the girls to come with them and he assured them that if they felt like they wanted to leave, they could head straight back to the Akademy in the morning and neither of the boys would blame them for doing so.

Ramza thought about the way Delita had done it. It had been a well-thought-out little speech but had he been one of the girls, after being thanked for coming with them and being told what a wonderful person he was for being so loyal, he would have found it hard to then say to Delita, knowing he was grief-stricken over his kidnapped sister, that he was going to walk away from this. Yet Delita had said all the things that needed to be said to the girls, so why did Ramza feel like Delita had subtly manipulated the situation to guarantee that the girls would make the "right" choice?

He had to be wrong, at least about his suspicions that Delita had _deliberately_ done it this way. Delita had been the one who had said it was wrong to have even asked them to come, after all... Not everyone was the subtle politician that Dycedarg was - Delita had probably just said what he felt was needful without thinking exactly how it would sound, put that way.

* * *

Delita hadn't failed to notice the troubled covert glances that Ramza kept throwing his way before their food had arrived – they really weren't helping him shrug off the insidious sense of guilt he was feeling. He knew he had been a manipulative bastard but, with Tietra's safety on the line, he was trying very hard not to care too much about that. In the short time between talking to Ramza and them all settling themselves in the tap-room for supper, he'd decided that, wrong or not, he was going to say what Ramza expected of him, but not in the way he'd originally meant to.

Perhaps he should... but no, if Ramza had been the one to speak to the girls he'd have done no better at sticking to what they'd agreed! Only, in that case, the chivalrous idiot would likely have practically begged the girls to leave for their own best interests. Whether he felt guilty or not, getting Tietra back was more important than chivalry or even honour! Surely the ends justified the means, in this case.

As they ate and the others threw off the solemnity that his speech had created, he tried to do the same. He looked around the tap-room, empty of all but them – even though it was less than a mile from the last village they had passed, this must not be a popular place with the locals. Either that or no-one had wanted to brave the torrential rain to come for a drink this evening. Even the landlord was currently absent. It was certainly a dingy little dive of a place. Then he caught sight of the grubby-looking dark-haired toddler who was standing in the doorway regarding them, sucking on his forefinger. He gasped aloud, which made Ramza turn towards him, a questioning look on his face. Delita nodded towards the child in the doorway.

"Sorry I got a shock - it's just he's the spitting-image of Drysta." He said.

"Your baby brother?" Ramza asked. Delita nodded.

"I didn't know you had a brother." Hildy, who was sitting opposite Delita, said, frowning.

"He died at the same time as my parents, when he wasn't much older than that." Delita said, nodding towards the child again – the boy was probably two-years-old. As six pairs of eyes turned towards him, the little boy gave them an alarmed look, then tried to hide under one of the other tables. As he did so, he bumped his head against one of the chair-legs. As the wailing began, it was Delita who jumped up and, crouching down in front of the little boy, tried to calm him, while checking him for any injury.

He spoke gently to the boy for a few moments and, as soon as he was sure that the little one's shyness was forgotten, he picked him up and carried him over to the table.

"Can't just let him wander about when there's an open hearth he could fall into." He said as he settled the little lad on his lap, in response to several questioning looks that were being directed at him. "What?" He asked as he saw that this wasn't going to satisfy several of the girls.

"We're just surprised, I suppose, at how you are with the little boy." Juliana, sitting to his left, said.

It wasn't too often that he still felt that there was a chasm between his own and his high-born friends' experiences. After all, half of his life had now been spent living amongst people of their class and he quite enjoyed the fact that he could pass for either high- or low-born, depending on which was more advantageous at the time. But there were some things that would occasionally set him apart from the others, and apparently his reaction to small children was one of them.

Since the boy's parents weren't around, he'd naturally just gone to deal with the child when he had hurt himself. It simply would never have occurred to him that the others might not have done the same – or even not have known what to do. Yet, if you were brought up by a gaggle of nursery maids and governesses, even if you did have younger siblings, it probably wasn't necessary to automatically go and deal with them when they hurt themselves; there would always be a servant to do it instead.

He gave Juliana a rueful smile and a shrug.

"When your parents are farmers, they're almost always incredibly busy, so except when we were at school in the mornings, Tietra and I were almost always given the job of keeping an eye on Drysta, once he could walk, whether we were doing our chores or going out to play." He gave a wistful, reminiscent smile. "Even if we tried to leave him behind at home, he'd just give me mam the slip and toddle after us, so we quickly got used to having him along. So it just seems natural to see to this little one, since his mam and dad aren't about."

"Taters." The little boys suddenly said, pointing at the plate in front of him. Delita's attention went back to the boy.

"Do you like taters?" He asked. The boy nodded then reached out to take a roast potato.

"Looks like I'm sharing my supper, then." Delita said with amused resignation.

Ramza watched his friend, who was now having a quiet "chat" with the little boy, even though he was only getting the occasional guttural monosyllabic response. As he talked on, Delita happily ate from the same plate as the grubby urchin.

Of course, it was no surprise to _him_ that Delita was good with children, though all four girls seemed unsure what to make of it. To Ramza's vague shame, Delita and Tietra were always a lot better at anything practical than he or Alma. Whenever the four of them spent some days visiting his grandparents, the two Heirals would simply pitch in and help with the farm work and the care of his youngest cousins, while Alma and Ramza would have to be told and shown what they could do to help and, even once they began, they still weren't usually much good at it.

By the end of the meal, neither the landlord nor his wife, who presumably were the child's parents, had shown up and the little one was beginning to show signs of restlessness. Delita excused himself from the table and, carrying the little boy who still had a piece of potato clutched in one fist, went in search of someone to take the child off his hands. Given that it was late in the evening and that there was no-one searching for him, Delita assumed that the boy's parents thought him asleep in bed.

He discovered the kitchen and stuck his head around the door, spotting a pretty, though careworn woman, perhaps four or five years his senior scrubbing pots at the large sink in one corner. The disappearance of the landlord was also explained as he heard a loud snore to his right and turned to see the large man in a chair in front of the fire, sitting with his head flung back and his mouth wide open.

Delita walked into the kitchen, careful to be quiet so as not to disturb the sleeping man. He might as well not have bothered with his care, as the little boy called "Mamamam!" as soon as he saw the young woman. Surprisingly, the tavern keeper didn't awaken. The young woman turned sharply, revealing a heavily pregnant belly and gasped when she saw the tall knight-apprentice carrying her little son.

"Oh, sir! Has Bran been bothering you? I'm so sorry, I put him to bed an hour ago, I thought he'd gone straight to sleep."

"Please don't worry, mistress, he was no bother, he just kept us company for a few minutes, but then I thought I'd better come and find you and let you know he was out of bed." He carefully set the little one on his feet and the toddler headed straight for his mother, who immediately told him to stay quiet and not to wake his daddy, glancing apprehensively over at the man. Delita regarded the little boy for a moment, struck again with his resemblance to Drysta.

"May I ask, mistress, neither you or your husband are related to a family called Heiral – small-holders from Western Gallionne – are you?" The woman looked mystified at the question.

"No sir, Jaks and me both come from families that were serfs until twenty years ago. No-one from our families would ever have travelled more than a dozen miles from our village just over yonder."

"Ah well, not to worry, the little boy just reminded me of someone." He made as if to go, then halted, struck by how tired this heavily pregnant woman seemed, yet how reluctant she was to have her husband awoken.

"I'm sorry to be impertinent, mistress, but you look absolutely exhausted. Tell me where the little one sleeps and I'll put him back to bed for you. He seems to have taken to me and it would save you a job."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly ask you to do that, sir." She said, her eyes wide and an embarrassed look on her face.

He thought about insisting that she hadn't asked, he had volunteered, but the poor woman looked so flustered that he simply thanked her for a well-cooked supper and left the kitchen.

Perhaps he'd been wrong about the little boy's striking resemblance to Drysta. He'd been thinking a lot more than normal about his brother and parents since he had found out that Tietra had been taken and perhaps that had simply led him to fancy a resemblance where there wasn't one. His thoughts moved on from the boy to his poor tired mother.

As the recollection of the woman's fleeting expression of apprehension as she had thought the little boy might wake her husband passed through his mind, Delita made a decision. Once they had Tietra back, safe and sound, he'd help Alma with her little scheme about Tietra and Ramza. Not for the material gain but because he knew for certain that Ramza Beoulve would never give any woman cause for a moment of that sort of concern. He knew with a cast-iron surety that his sister would always be given all the respect and care in the world, if she married Ramza, and, above all, that was what he wanted for her.

* * *

Author's Note

If anything, I've made Alma more manipulative than Delita, up until now, and I never wanted that to be the case. Alma though, so far, only manipulates others for what she sees as their own good, Delita, on the other hand, I wanted to show doing some subtle manipulation to get what he needs from a situation. Certainly, he's doing it to help his sister, but what he wants from the four girls definitely isn't in their best interests. The means being justified by the ends, though, that's definitely Delita's personal mantra from here on out!


	21. Chapter 21 - Company for Middle Watch

**Vignette 21 – Company for Middle Watch**

_Upper reaches of the Lenalian Valley, around midnight_

Ramza woke with a start, as a few drops of water fell on his face.

"Wha... huh?" He sat up, vaguely aware that someone was leaning over him – Samantha presumably, since she had had first watch and he had middle.

"It's time." She whispered, handing him his own clock-watch, and then backing out of the boys' tent. Knowing he was due on watch, he had slept in his breeches, so he quickly finished dressing and then groped around in the dark for his waxed cloak – if Sam was so wet, he'd need to make sure he had that on as well, before going out there. Pulling it tight around him, he cautiously lifted the tent flap – only to find that there was no rain, and if the still unyielding feel of the soil underfoot was any indication, there never had been. Frowning, he pulled his cloak back off as he approached the girl, who was back at the large fire, sitting on the fallen log they'd dragged there when setting up the camp.

"Er... Sam, how come you were dripping on me?" He asked as he sat down next to her.

"Hmm? Oh, I, er... you know I've been struggling to learn Blizzard? I thought I'd practice while I sat here, so I kept trying to fire it off in random directions – that included trying to cast it directly overhead - which was the one that finally worked. It turns out that, if one wants to stay dry, it isn't such a good idea to do that when one is sitting close to a large fire. I probably should have had enough sense to realise that _before_ I ended up soaked through, though!" She grimaced at him and he grinned back.

"Well, at least, this means you must finally be making it work." He said, hoping he sounded more consoling than amused.

"Mmm. I was going to go straight to bed, but do you mind if I stay with you for a few minutes, while I finish drying out?"

"Of course not." He said, smiling at her. He liked Sam – just as he did all the girls. He hadn't had much chance to just be their friend in the last few weeks; being their captain had overshadowed that.

"Ramza, are you okay?" She said, suddenly.

"Of course." He said, frowning. "Why do you ask that?"

"Well, Delita's distraught, which is awful for him, and can't be easy on you; but at least he's getting a ton of sympathy, while you're not getting much. I was thinking about you while I was taking my watch, you see, and I think half the time the rest of us forget that this business with Tietra must be tearing you apart inside almost as much as it does him. I'm sorry, Ramza, I don't think we've been as sensitive to you as we could have been. And today after we... well you know... fought..." She trailed off and looked away into the darkness.

"After we killed all those people, you mean." He said quietly, staring into the fire, himself.

"Yes... You looked almost as upset as Delita, but he was the one who was getting all the attention – even yours. I know he's upset about Tietra and now he's worried that this situation is turning him into something he can't live with - and him being the one who delivered the final blow to that Milleuda woman made that all worse - but I saw your face, too. I mean, we were all upset that they refused to surrender when we offered it, but _you_ looked ashen after the battle." She said, reaching over and touching his arm.

"I love Tietra. Alma, Delita and Tietra, they're each like a part of me. If anything happened to any of them, I don't know what I would do. But... well... the last thing that Milleuda said was "forgive me brother". Every person we kill is someone's sister, daughter, brother, husband, father, or whatever. They'll all be as important to someone as Tietra is to Delita and I. Sometimes, in the dark watches of the night, I can't help but think about things like that, but her saying that, just as she died today, that really drove it home for me. I've deprived someone else of their sister, today - no doubt more than just one 'someone else' - just to get our sister back. Get Delita's sister back, I mean.

"We have to do this – I'll not flinch from whatever I'm forced to do to recover her. She's far too precious for me to baulk at the methods we have to use, but... it's just... the Brigade are beaten - they must have known it, even before they attacked Mansion Beoulve. Yet they're holding Tietra and they're going to use her as a hostage, a bargaining chip in some sort of futile last stand. I feel sure of that. I wonder if this was against Wiegraf's orders again? I understand why we had to fight them before, but now, when there are only, perhaps, a score left. I'll kill when I have to, I already have - we all have - but I just think that the deaths today were unnecessary. If only we could have _made_ her listen!

"God's, I'm sorry, Sam, I've been rambling on and on." A slight blush tinting Ramza's cheeks was just visible in the firelight.

"Don't be silly. Just remember that I'm here to talk to, like this, whenever you want. But Ramza, try not to dwell on it too much. They kidnapped Tietra, they _chose_ to do that, they must have known there were other ways to evade justice. If they had run, just scattered across Gallionne, there's so few of them they could have probably all have just kept their heads down and escaped any further retribution. They've _chosen_ this course." She repeated.

"You know, I'd worry more about you if you _weren't_ bothered by taking people's lives. I _hate _that we've had to do it over and over, but if we just didn't care when we killed...? What sort of people would that make us?" She asked.

Sam suddenly got up, turned and stepped over the log and then just sat back down. Ramza was perplexed for a moment, glancing at her now deeply shadowed face, then remembered that her back was probably still wet from the melted Blizzard spell.

"What do you think you'll do after this, Sam? I got the impression that, of all the girls, you're the least enamoured of the military life. And no-one has expectations that _you _will prove yourself a military prodigy capable of becoming the next General of the Northern Sky; you could choose not to go into the army."

"I don't know. Until I couldn't master Blizzard, I thought I had the potential to be really good at magick. I was thinking of asking my father if I could go back to Gariland next year, but to attend the Magickal Akademy instead. I'd probably have to start at first year again, but the pupils there have a wider age range, so it probably wouldn't be so bad if I was a bit older than average. But... well... if I couldn't even master Blizzard..."

"You'd been trying for... what? Four days? I don't think that makes you a black magick dunce - especially as you got both Fire and Thunder straight away!" He had to lean back so that he could make eye contact and smile at her, since she was now facing the opposite way.

"Besides, my mother once said that unless a mage was unusually talented, they'd quickly realise they had a better affinity for certain branches of magick. She'd mastered white magick by the time she was twenty, but she was closer to thirty before she did the same for time magick; she said she just didn't have as much of a knack for it. On the other hand, the couple of summons she knew, she'd had no trouble learning. She said the only reason she didn't change her secondary specialism was that, as a summoner, she'd have been expected to hurt people. She knew time magick's Gravity family of spells but I got the impression she never used them, she just stuck to being a pure support mage." She smiled back at him and suddenly leant over and kissed him on the cheek.

"Thanks, Ramza."

"What for? I think it should be me thanking you for listening to me maunder on, earlier." He hesitated for a second, smiling at her. It suddenly occurred to him how pretty Sam was, so he leant over and kissed _her_ cheek.

He probably shouldn't have done that, he thought, vaguely. This was...well... actually, now he thought of it, this was probably flirting, wasn't it? He'd never really known what you were meant to do to begin flirting with someone, though Delita never seemed to have any trouble. What with the Tietra situation, this probably wasn't the time for flirting with anyone... though Sam seemed to be far from objecting, and... this was daft - they'd only kissed each other on the cheek.

After he'd kissed her, she'd ducked her head, as if she was embarrassed, but she put her hand on his as she spoke again.

"I was thanking you for being supportive and encouraging. I love magick; I think it's all fascinating, and I don't really enjoy any of the physical combat arts we've been using, but I have been worried that I wasn't as good as I needed to be to specialise in it. When we were attending that banquet at Eagrose, I overheard Lord Zalbaag say to someone that his step-mother had been an incredibly gifted mage – so when I heard that, I thought I knew where you got it from. However, if she really was so gifted and _she_ still struggled with some magicks more than others - perhaps there's hope for me yet."

"Of course there is, more than just hope; you're really good, Sam. You know, you probably should write to your father straight away, and ask – do you worry he won't agree?" Ramza asked.

"Mmm." She said, in assent. "He wasn't very convinced that sending me to the military akademy was a good idea in the first place. If I ask to train as a mage instead... well he may just decide I'm a lot more use being married off to someone who would be a "good connection" for the family.

"Oh... I don't know. Maybe, if I can convince him that the Akademy hasn't been a total waste, that it's simply been a decent way to find out what I'm actually good at, he'll consent." Ramza thought about that for a moment.

"You know, I wasn't joking when I said you're _really_ good, Sam. If you keep practising and then show the Masters at the magick akademy just what you're capable of, surely they'd let you skip at least first year? That might make it easier for your father to accept you taking your magicks training further. I can help you practise for now, if you'd like – I think you're at least as good as I am, but I'll do what I can." He paused for a moment, then went on thoughtfully.

"You're good at mathematics too, now I think about it. Zal's always said that there's nothing more helpful nor more deadly than a fully trained Arithmetician on the battlefield. If I told him that you were very interested in all types of magick and that you might end up specialising as one, I think he might easily be persuaded to write to your father and say what an asset you could be to the Northern Sky with further training. Would that help, do you think?

"Do I think _General Beoulve_ writing to my father and asking him to let me continue my training would be helpful? Hmm, let me think..." It wasn't hard to pick up the sarcasm.

"Ramza, you're one of the Beoulves and I know, for you, it's probably difficult to understand how other people see the noble house of Beoulve, but you do understand just how powerful your family are in Gallionne, don't you? I'm just an ordinary cadet – father might be a Baronet, but he's pretty unimportant – we're basically just your typical landed gentry. So, honestly, if I want to be a mage, how much help do _you_ think it might be, that General Beoulve took the time to write to him about that? He was impressed and a little surprised that _we_ were friends when I told him that last summer."

"My family aren't really _that_ high and mighty, you know. I mean, Dycedarg's an Earl, not a Duke or a Marquis or anything, and he's only... like... seventy-fourth in line to the throne, or something..." She looked nonplussed for a second, then started to giggle.

"So you're family aren't all that "high and mighty"... and you're second in line to an Earldom and "like" seventy-sixth in line to the throne, "or something"?" She asked, still laughing quietly.

"Perhaps." Ramza looked away, uncomfortably. There was no way in Ivalice that his father's cousins wouldn't strenuously challenge his right to the Earldom if, heaven forbid, anything were to happen to his two elder brothers – royal decree or no royal decree, they had never been prepared to admit his or Alma's legitimacy. If there was to be some cataclysm that destroyed everyone in the royal succession right down to the Beoulves... but no, that was impossible – mad to even think of it.

His lack of comfort with the topic was because, for all he never tried to hide that he was of mixed-birth, his friends didn't know that his parents hadn't been married when he had been born. Dycedarg had always drummed it into him that he could tell _no-one_ about that! He was... okay with that, he supposed. His father had always been ashamed that he hadn't married their mother before Alma and Ramza were born, he knew, so he didn't keep the secret just at Dycedarg's urging, but to protect his father's honour.

Ramza realised that neither of them had spoken for a while and that Sam's hand was still on his - though just as he did realise, she removed it.

"Ramza, if you're being quiet because you'd rather not speak to your brother – you know, if saying that was just an impulse, or something – and you don't think he'd be happy..." He interrupted before she went further.

"No, Sam, no. Of course I'll speak to him, as soon as we get back, and I'm sure he'll be delighted to do it. He's been really pleased with how our squad has performed, you know. However," he said, grinning at her, "if he doesn't agree right away, I can simply set Alma on him. You have _no_ idea how good she is at nagging Zal! He usually caves in after about two minutes - three tops. Of course," he added, rolling his eyes, "she's good at nagging everyone – even Dycedarg gives in more often than not!" Sam grinned at him for a moment, then she quickly covered her mouth as she gave a small yawn.

"I've pretty much dried out, now, so suppose I should be getting to bed. And... thank-you Ramza, you're a really good friend, you know." She leant in and kissed him again, this time at the corner of his mouth. Then she rose and left him to finish his watch alone.

Ramza considered going after her and seeing if he could claim a few more kisses before she got to her tent. He was coming to realise that no matter how prudish he was deep down, that it would still be nice to have a relationship with a girl. No-one said he had to jump into bed with anyone yet - just because Delita was doing that, did not mean he also should. Having an attractive girl he could kiss and cuddle with might be rather nice, though.

Sam was pretty and very kind and he liked her a lot. She was the quietest person in the squad which was, perhaps, why he hadn't realised she liked him like that until tonight... or had he misread that? Of course, he accepted Alma and Delita's assessment that he was "useless with girls", so maybe he should check with Delita if _he_ had ever thought Sam might like Ramza as more than just a friend.

Of course, he had occasionally thought that Ophellia might be interested in him too. She was also attractive and somewhat more outgoing than Sam and... well... though she was petite, she was also curvier, he thought with a blush, which might be rather nice when it came to... cuddling. If there really was a damned Grand Ball, after all this was over, perhaps he'd ask one of them to go with him. Which one he wasn't sure; he liked both.

He wondered why he was even thinking it. Any time he tried to talk to a girl in any way that was more than just being friendly, he usually ended up so tongue-tied that he could barely string two words together. He'd just have to resign himself to going to the Ball with Alma and Tietra, no doubt - which probably wouldn't be so bad - they always had fun together and, at least, Tietra wasn't actually a blood relation. Plus, she was every bit as pretty as Sam or Ophellia and she was still the loveliest person he'd ever known...

_Gods, please let her be all right!_

* * *

Author's note:

Er... I was sure that this was going to be a really short one but, hey, longest one yet... so, moving swiftly on!

The good news is that I already have a rough draft of the next vignette, so hopefully I should be a lot quicker posting that one (fingers crossed for the weekend, though I make no promises) – and that will be the last vignette of this set, after that there'll only be the epilogue, which probably won't be quite like a normal vignette.


	22. Chapter 22 - Holy Knight

Last vignette of Chapter 1. Just the epilogue after this.

* * *

**Vignette 22 – Holy Knight**

_In the hills along the border of Gallione and Fovoham, north-west of Fovoham Windflats. Evening._

The weather had turned incredibly cold for Cancer, so the six of them all sat huddled in cloaks around the fire. Delita had been trying again not the think about the fact that they had killed several more women today or that he had been the one who had struck the killing blow against Wiegraf Folles' sister the day before. He'd killed that man's sister in order to get Tietra back – but didn't that make him almost as bad as these people?

_No, of course it doesn't, you fool; Tietra's a tiny, harmless, innocent girl who wasn't part of this conflict!_ He chided himself. He truly was being foolish, thinking like this - tomorrow they would be at the fortress, if he wanted to save Tietra he had to be able to focus on her, not be feeling guilty about killing some woman who had refused to surrender.

He decided that he would dwell on neither the deaths today, nor Tietra, for now. Thinking of either would only make him more depressed.

He pulled Juli, who was shivering, closer and, noticing that she was rubbing her hands together as if to warm them, he removed his gloves and he handed them to her to wear, though they were far too big. To try to take his mind off depressing things, he asked the question which had been a vague niggle in the back of his mind since the fight with Wiegraf.

"Why does everyone say that Sword Techniques are undetectable and undodgeable? I accept unblockable, which I've also heard said, but I _could_ feel them coming, both times Wiegraf used them on me. If I'd realised what I was feeling, I think I could have dodged, if I'd been quick. I reckon there must have been a second, maybe two, where I could have flung myself aside..." His voice slowed down towards the end, as he felt Juliana stiffen.

He had been looking into the fire as he spoke but as he moved his head to look down at her, her caught sight of the almost comically shocked expression on Ramza's face. He was surprised to find that Ramza was reacting at all, never mind so strongly. Ramza had been preoccupied ever since Wiegraf's shouted accusations about his brothers that afternoon.

"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that I'm lacking some vital piece of information here." He said to his friend, glancing down at Juli, who looked almost as shocked as Ramza. He glanced around - all four girls looked a little stunned at what he had said.

"Please tell me that Dycedarg tested you, when you were little." Ramza said, his voice actually quavering a little.

"Tested me? What are you on about?" Delita asked, exasperated.

"Have you never been near Dycedarg when he used a Holy Sword technique?" Ramza asked.

"I think I was... once. I saw Lord Dycedarg smash the armour right off Zalbaag from a distance, when they were sparring together, no holds barred, one time. That would have been one, right? It's looked hellish painful, I know that." Delita gave a half-smile, still feeling disconcerted at Ramza's odd solemnity.

"No that would be the other sort – Crush Armour; that's an Unyielding Blade Technique."

"Crush Armour? Lots of thought went into that name, I see." He said, drily. His half-smile wasn't returned.

"Delita, you need to take this _seriously_. There is a very good chance that you are a Holy Knight." Delita frowned at his friend.

"I'm low-born Ramza. That means I can't be, right? They say it usually runs in families, often skipping a generation or three, but it's still in the blood... _noble_ blood." He clarified.

"Wiegraf Folles..." Ramza began, but Delita interrupted

"I heard everyone assumes he's just some nobleman's by-blow..." Ramza's face stiffened slightly. "Sorry, I didn't..."

"That's not important." Ramza cut him off. "Delita, since you aren't... unless..." Ramza trailed off and his look of shock, this time possibly tinged with just a little horror, resurfaced.

"What? Oh... No! Absolutely not! I look _really_ like me dad did! I love you and all that, but I am _not _your half-brother!"

His dad had been a gentle giant of a man, kind and loving to his family. Granted, if he had been some kind of brute, Delita wouldn't have minded the thought that Lord Barbaneth might have been his natural father, but to hell with that - he _did _look like his dad!

"I wasn't thinking that, actually." Ramza said with a half-smile, half-grimace. Delita paused for a moment trying to work out...

"No! No way in Ivalice! No, just no! No, no, no, no no! The day I call your darling little sister "Auntie Alma" is the day I shoot myself in the head with a crossbow! Besides, I refuse to believe that me mam would _ever_!... _Never!_" There was no half-smile about Ramza's grimace as he replied to that.

"I'm sure she wouldn't, but as eldest son, Dycedarg could have demanded _jus primae noctis..._ but I'm pretty sure _he_ would never..." Delita interrupted Ramza, his voice icy.

"Whether or not Dycedarg would ever exercise his _d__r__oit du seigneur _is immaterial, Ramza. As you were so quick to point out to Argath some weeks ago, the Heirals have, since time immemorial, been _freemen_, even if we always were so poor we barely had a pot to piss in. Dycedarg would have had no right of the first night! You've _seen_ that charcoal sketch I have of me mam and dad - do I, or do I not, look just like him?" Delita demanded hotly.

The sketch was one that his parents had had done at the county fair, by an itinerant artist, shortly after they were married, and it now sat in a simple frame on his bedside back at Mansion Beoulve. It was not a masterly drawing, being the sort of thing that a gifted amateur could have produced, but the man in the drawing did look like a slightly older Delita.

"You do, and I'm sorry... and you're right." Ramza said. "I didn't mean to upset you, it's just... Actually, now I think about it, there is no chance you could be Dycedarg's son, even so. If he thought that there was the slightest chance you were, he would have tested you for this. He knows only too well how important it is - any sword-technique user attached to the House, even by a tenuous link, adds prestige.

"You know, there's probably a much simpler explanation." Ramza went on, frowning. "The children of the upper classes are often tested, either at school in their teens, like Sam, Juli, Ophellia and Hildy were, or if there's a family member or members, like Dycedarg and Zal, who can use the techniques, it'll happen at home when the child is still young. Most times, everyone else isn't tested at all. The middle and working classes may well have just as many people capable of using the techniques, only they live their entire lives without ever knowing it."

"So you were all tested at school?" Delita demanded of the girls. Four blonde heads just nodded. Interestingly, they were all just staying quiet and listening to the two boys. That probably shouldn't surprise him, considering that the discussion had been pretty personal and intense at times. "So how come I wasn't?" He asked Ramza, sounding confused. Ramza shrugged.

"It happens in the first term of your first year - you didn't start at the Akademy until our second term. When the men who came in to test us arrived, the Headmaster pulled me aside and asked if my father had had my brothers test me. Since I said yes, I only had to have the Fell Knight test. The Head probably just assumed that you had been too, hence not pulling you out of class in second year when the testers came back."

"Or, more likely, he just thought that the "farm-boy" wasn't worth testing." Delita added, darkly.

"Possibly." Ramza said with a small grimace.

"So what happens now? About me being a Holy Knight? _Maybe _being a Holy Knight, I mean."

"We'll get Dycedarg and Zal to give you, _and_ Tietra, the proper testing as soon as we can after we all get home. Assuming you are one, and that you only have the one skill set, you get to spend a few months training with a Holy Knight, I believe."

"Dycedarg?" Delita tried not to sound too dismayed and thought he hadn't succeeded very well.

"I doubt he'd have the time – unless you prove to be a Rune Knight, then I think he's, kind of, semi-obliged to do it. There's some strange customs attached to this whole thing. No, I'd imagine that it's most likely to be the new Holy Knight who's started to do the testing for the school who'd train you, that's part of her duty – if she finds someone, she's also supposed to take them on as a sort-of short-term apprentice. Dycedarg, being who he is, can probably enlist her help, or another Holy Knight's – it's not like we're at war right now, so anyone with the gift is likely to have more time than they would have had a few years ago.

"Because Dycedarg has two of the gifts, and my father was Lord Orlandeau's closest friend, I gather Dycedarg spent a couple of winters, between campaign seasons, at Château Orlandeau. Wherever that Holy Knight lives, you'll probably end up staying there for a while. She's almost certainly nobility or gentry, so I'm sure you'll get reasonably comfortable quarters." Ramza gave him a slightly wan smile, while Delita frowned back, deep in thought.

"As if that really matters... I... just... this is all so strange!" Delita suddenly burst out.

"Yes, I think it's why they usually try and catch those with the gift a bit earlier. I mean, by the time you are sixteen, you usually have some inkling about what's going to happen with your life – this does change everything." Ramza's expression was inscrutable as well as rather peculiar. Even Delita couldn't read it.

"And it changes nothing. I was always going to be going into the army for a few years. Presumably, once I'm trained that'll still happen." Delita said, consideringly.

"Yes, if it's what you want. But the sort of undeserved privilege and accelerated promotion that _I'm_ likely to get because of my family name, you'll now get too because you're a Holy Knight." Ramza said drily.

"Really? Sounds all right to me." Delita grinned at his friend. Ramza rolled his eyes at that.

"How come you knew so little about this, Delita? It has to be said that Mr Know-It-All seems to have a gaping hole in his knowledge here." Delita scowled at his friend for a moment, but then answered him pleasantly enough.

"Oh, you know me. I've never been interested in the actual _fighting_, it's the military history, the strategy and the politics that really interest me. Knowing how to wave a sword around is just an incidental by-product of attending the Military Akademy. I only try to be fairly good at it because, otherwise, I'll probably end up dead one day.

Ramza realised just how true that was. Delita was fairly skilled in all of the martial techniques, but that was partly because he was larger than average and proportionately strong. Ramza on the other hand burned to be a great fighter and officer and trained hard to try to achieve that. Added to that, while Delita was good, he was far from brilliant with the sword and bow etc. He only made the effort to excel at the things that really interested him, and any variant of "waving a sword around" simply wasn't interesting, in his eyes. Of course, now that would have to change to a degree. In fact, his whole life would change enormously. Ramza wasn't certain if it had really sunk in with Delita just how huge this was.

* * *

Later that night, when the two boys were in their bed-rolls in their small tent, Delita began tentatively:

"I feel like I should apologise, Ramza, this gift I may have, probably should be yours, by rights."

He'd been too shocked by the whole thing, earlier, to think about how Ramza must be feeling but, now that he'd had time to reflect, he realised just how difficult this must be on his friend. Ramza's father may not have had the ability to access Sword Techniques, but both of his brothers had their own gifts, and now Delita, too, would likely be joining that elite group.

"Don't be daft." Ramza's voice was a little gruff. "I've known since I was eight that I had no gift like this... All right, I know I must have seemed a bit... off, tonight. I _am_ a little jealous, but I'm more pleased for you than anything else. Don't you realise that there will be far less to hold you back now? What your low-birth was likely to get in the way of you achieving, this will help you overcome. You may even have your chance in high politics, eventually, if you still want to."

Delita thought about that for a few moments. This was taking a while to all sink in, but one thing was unchanged.

"I still say it shouldn't be like that." He said. "It's just another form of nepotism... sort-of. My inheritance isn't noble blood, it's sword techniques - it still doesn't change the fact that it's accident of birth and that isn't a good enough reason for giving some people..." Ramza interrupted, sounding weary.

"Oh, don't start this again now - it's late and I'm tired and you already know I agree with you. Stop complaining about it and start being pleased about the fact you have a gift that might allow you to work towards changing the way society is so unfair to the poor and the low-born!" Delita heard Ramza shift, making himself as comfortable as one could lying on a bedroll on the ground.

"Yeah, you're right. Thanks Ramza, you're a true friend." He said quietly.

Feeling a little overwhelmed, he lay in the dark and tried to think calmly about all of this. What he eventually decided was that he'd not make any assumptions until he was completely certain. If he started to get too excited about this, and then it turned out that he had been wrong, well... It was best that he concentrate on the most important thing – getting Tietra back safe and sound – then he could think about his new undeserved privilege and work out exactly what he could do with it.

* * *

Author's Note:

OK, so the idea behind this vignette started with me having always wondered how come Delita gets to be a Holy Knight in Chapter 2 when he wasn't one in Chapter 1 and this was the outcome. I tried to find a rational explanation ("rational"... yeah. A rational explanation for being able to shoot giant sword-shaped high-energy beams up through people) and, since I don't buy that Delita, Wiegraf, Agrias, Dycedarg (!) and Cid are all ultra-holy people (I think that's everyone in the game who can use Holy Sword techniques - correct me if I'm wrong), I'm fudging it and going with "something you're just born with" - all the sword techniques but Dark Knights' are like that... I've arbitrarily decided.

Honestly, I'm really glad that this is the last "Tietra's been kidnapped and we have to get her back" vignette. I can't see that either Ramza or Delita would be able to think much about anything else – their whole focus would be on that goal, and I've tried to stick to that to some extent, but it makes it damned difficult to write anything new and interesting and, most of all, not depressing.

Only the Post-Ziekden Fortress epilogue left now. Nearly there!


	23. Epilogue - Ruination

So going from "Tietra's been kidnapped, we have to get her back" to "Oh my gods! Tietra's just been murdered by Argath on Zalbaag's orders" doesn't exactly make this less depressing than the recent vignettes. Sorry.

* * *

**Epilogue – Ruination  
**

_A sheltered clearing, about a quarter-mile from the newly ruined Ziekden Fortress, late afternoon._

**Samantha:**

Sam felt so disconnected from what was going on, that it was almost like she was drifting above the slushy snow that they had trudged through, half-dragging, half-carrying Ramza's limp body. She knew, in a detached way, that this was probably a touch of shock... yes shock – that would be it. She shook her head to try to clear it - that didn't seem to work.

Hildy had first asked and then had to bark orders at Ophellia to get a blanket and lay it out. Even then, it took a few moments before Ophellia, moving as stiffly as an automaton, did as she had been told. Sam and Hildy unhooked Ramza's arms from around their shoulders and, with some difficulty, laid him down on the blanket, and Hildegarde covered him with another.

"Sam... _Samantha!_ Gods, you're in nearly as bad a state as she is!" She heard Hildy say. She registered the words, but little more than that. So...who was "she"? It couldn't be Juliana, she'd crystallised and one of the enemy knights had just walked up and absorbed the crystal as if it hadn't been all that was left of Juli, their friend. That couldn't _really_ have happened, could it?... 'One of the enemy knights'... _enemy? _They weren't enemies, though, not really; they were Northern Order, just like they themselves. How...?

This was a nightmare... it had to be - she'd wake up in a moment and Juliana, Delita and Tietra wouldn't be dead. She didn't notice Hildy approach her, but suddenly the other girl was almost nose to nose with her.

"Sam, you have to snap out of this. You're better at white magick than I am, so I need you pull yourself together and do your best with Ramza. If you'll do that, I can see to Ophellia; that's a nasty burn on her arm – you know I have to deal with it quickly or it will scar badly. _Sam!_ Do I have to slap you?" Hildy asked, her voice harsh, though there was a sheen of tears across her eyes too. Sam swallowed a couple of times.

"No, I'll... I'll see to Ramza, it's fine." She said, again shaking her head - hard this time.

She knelt by the boy, absently rummaging her pocket for a clean handkerchief. Wetting it with water from one of the canteens, she cleaned his face which left it scratched and scraped in a few places, but fairly free of other marks except a large ugly-looking contusion on his forehead. Head wounds could be deadly, and nothing else could have roused her so effectively as knowing that if she didn't pull herself together, there could be yet another death today. She got to work. Cura was a very new spell to her, one she wasn't yet confident with, but, in comparison, Cure felt like an old familiar friend and so she used that, knowing that, though she might have to cast it multiple times, it always worked well for her.

After the second casting, Ramza's eyes fluttered open and he stared uncomprehendingly up at her. She was now sitting cross-legged next to his head while she abstractedly stroked his messy hair back from where it was clinging to his damp face as she tried desperately not to cry in mingled relief and grief. She didn't succeed.

Ramza looked up at her tear-streaked face in what appeared to be mingled confusion and consternation. He raised a hand towards her, almost as if to wipe her tears away, but then dropped it as his eyes went very wide and he shot up into a sitting position. That made him dry-heave, which she knew was almost certainly a sign that his head-wound wasn't fully healed, so she began to quickly chant the Cure incantation again. Then she saw him glow with the blue-red of a Chakra and she stopped mid-syllable.

Chakra... she remembered Juliana complaining, a lifetime ago, which was actually just this morning, that her monk's outfit had never been made for cold weather, and Delita giving her a look of frank admiration and telling her that it might be cold, but at least she looked sexy as hell in it. Sam had been a little embarrassed by overhearing that, at the time. Now she was just glad that Delita's compliment had made her friend seem to glow with happiness. Though not entirely unworried, Delita had seemed relatively cheerful that morning too - this was the day that they should be getting his sister back, after all...

When Ramza finally spoke, his voice was hoarse and so unlike him that, if she hadn't seen him speak, she would never have recognised the voice.

"Delita! Oh gods! Sam, what happened? I remember being knocked down by the explosion, and I couldn't get up and then... then I think there was another explosion..." He met her eyes and the expression on his face was wild and pained. "_Please_, Sam, what happened?" She watched him warily for a moment, concerned and reluctant. She very much did not want to be the one who told him that Delita must also be dead.

"There _was_ another explosion – much bigger than the first. A chunk of debris hit you on the head and you were knocked out... you were concussed I think. Delita... Delita was... There is no way he could have..." She took a deep shuddering breath. "He couldn't have survived that, Ramza, he was almost right up against the building when it exploded – an enormous explosion, the entire building was destroyed... Ramza, I'm so very very sorry." Her voice dropped to a whisper with her last words.

She suddenly remembered two evenings before when he had said: "Alma, Delita and Tietra, they're like part of me. If anything happened to any of them, I don't know what I would do." His face, which had briefly regained a little of its colour after her second Cure, was now ashen and he looked nauseated - she didn't think it necessarily had anything to do with the head-wound this time, though. She realised that she was crying again – had never stopped, actually. Child-like, she attempted to dry her tears with the heels of her hands, all the while trying to keep a wary eye on Ramza.

"Sam, I..." Ramza began. "He's not dead, Sam. He can't be – not him _and _Tietra, not both of them. I have to go and..." He began to get to his feet and Sam clutched at his arm.

"Ramza, please, the second explosion was huge, no-one could have survived it. Please, _please_ don't go back there. The whole place is still really dangerous – all of the piled up rubble keeps shifting as it's settling - if you tried to find their bodies, and it _will_ be bodies Ramza, you could end up being buried under the debris yourself. I'm not talking about pebbles, Ramza - big blocks of masonry. _Please_ Ramza, you dying too won't bring them back!" In her desperation she began to sob again.

He looked at her, shivering, his eyes dull and haunted. She would have expected tears, but he shed none. Perhaps he was in shock too – it seemed highly likely. They sat staring at each other for more than a minute, and then he made to rise again, his movements as stiff as an old man's. She grabbed for his arm again.

"It's okay, Sam," he said, his voice still hoarse and hollow, "I believe you - they're both dead." Something registered in his face. "All three of them... oh gods, Juli too!" He fell silent, his eyes going dull again. Then something flickered again in their depths, it was almost as if each new thought of Ramza's was taking an age to form.

"And Zal, how could Zalbaag have... I just... I need some time alone... please, just let me be." She watched as he rose, then turned and walked away from her, out of the clearing, heading south, not back towards the smouldering ruins, which entombed two of the people he had loved and cared most for in the world. She wanted so much to help him and knew anything she did, right now, would be futile.

* * *

Three hours later, she, Hildy and Ophellia scrambled down to the ruined Fortress in the dying light of the sunset. They spent twenty minutes frantically combing the area around Ziekden and found no signs that Ramza had even passed this way. They should have followed his trail, after all, it seemed, not headed directly back here. But if Ramza hadn't come here, then where in Ivalice had he gone? And how were they even to track him, when it would be full dark in less than half an hour?

* * *

_Under the ruins of Ziekden Fortress, the early hours of the following morning._

**Delita:**

He came back to consciousness very gradually, his head pounding, his mouth incredibly dry. The realisation of why he was lying in absolute darkness, every inch of his body aching, came upon him all at once and he tried to say his sister's name, but his mouth was so parched that it came out as an unrecognisable whispery croak. Why wasn't he dead? He should be dead. He'd rather he had died and Tietra had lived.

They'd been going to save her. Why couldn't they have saved her? If there was anyone who didn't deserve what had happened to her, it was Tietra.

Oh gods, if he wasn't dead, that must mean he was underneath what was left of the fortress. He might half-wish he was dead so that he could be with Tietra again, but unless he could get out from under here he would starve to death... no, dehydration would kill him first. It was supposed to be a horrible way to die.

Ramza... Would he come and get Delita out? He'd said things to Ramza hadn't he, something... he wasn't sure. Something was wrong with his mind, it wasn't working quite right, he thought vaguely – he'd hit his head or something had hit him on the head... or something.

He didn't want to die, not like this, and not until he had killed Zalbaag... and Dycedarg, anyway; Zalbaag could barely manage to decide what to have for breakfast each day without Dycedarg's say-so - pulling his strings, like the puppet he was... so Dycedarg had ordered this. Why? Why had they...?

Ramza would come, wouldn't he? Ramza didn't hold grudges; he wouldn't blame Delita for what he had said, would he? Not enough to leave him here to die, surely? He'd only said it because it was what he wanted to say to Zalbaag, hadn't he? Just because Ramza was Zalbaag's brother...

Oh gods, Tietra... All he had had left, after his parents died was Tietra, she was the only thing he'd had to love left in the entire world and they'd taken her from him. Her body must be somewhere around here, mustn't it? He groped around for a couple of seconds, until he realised that the last thing he wanted to do really was feel his sister's cold dead body under his hand in this Stygian blackness.

Why didn't Ramza come and get him? Had Ramza ended up buried under the rubble too? He couldn't be...? No! Ramza couldn't be dead, he'd been much further away from the fortress than Delita, so he wouldn't have been buried, surely... and surely he'd be all right? He had to be; who the hell else would bother trying to get Delita out?

No-one else cared for him now but Ramza and Alma. Juli had cared... poor Juli. Why was it that the thought of Tietra being dead was like a gaping, howling, fathomless pit of pain within him and he hadn't even remembered Juli until just then?... He felt nothing when he thought of her... lovely Juliana turning into a crystal in the snow. He should feel guilty about that, grieved, but he just felt... nothing – numb.

He didn't feel numb about Zalbaag and Dycedarg and Argath. He hoped Argath would roast slowly over the fires of hell for all eternity. He'd do his best to see Zalbaag and Dycedarg would join him; though not too soon, if he had his way they'd suffer right here first as well!

Ramza and Alma loved their brothers. They loved Tietra... so where would the two of them stand on this? Would they help him, or would they stand in his way? He'd have his revenge and if Alma or Ramza tried to stop him he'd... he'd what?

He felt a breath of air, a faint breeze on his face. No he was imagining it, wasn't he?... Maybe not. He was lying on his back and he tentatively lifted his hands in front of him, until they were at full stretch. That simple action shot pains up his bruised arms, the skin tightening agonisingly where he must have been burned during the second explosion. He lay panting on the ground for a few seconds, his entire upper body awash with pain. _Forget the pain, it isn't important,_ he told himself – he'd managed to extend his arms fully; he should be able to sit up. So he sat up and threw up.

Great, and he'd thought that things literally couldn't get any worse. Now he was stuck in a dark hole with the body of his dead sister somewhere near, feeling like no inch of him didn't hurt and to crown it all, said dark hole now stank of vomit.

With that thought, he was certain his mind wasn't working quite right – he shouldn't be thinking like that at a time like this. He should probably be panicking. Instead of panic, he was swinging from intense hatred to grief to feeling weirdly detached and analytical.

He'd just sit here and rest for a minute, at least until his brain started to work right again. Gods, he was thirsty! Hang on, didn't he have a Potion in his belt-pouch? One Potion wouldn't do too much for his thirst and it couldn't come near to healing him fully, he felt certain, but it surely must help!

* * *

It didn't do a lot. Yet, after a couple of minutes, the nausea had lessened and he began to grope around. He found a small gap, at about head height when he was kneeling, between two pieces of fallen masonry... and yes, that was where the breeze was coming in. While feeling around, he'd found a sheet of tangled long hair stretched along the ground, but oddly, it had ended, not in Tietra's body, but one of the "walls" of his tiny prison.

After Lady Beoulve had died, Alma and Tietra had sometimes seemed to be trying to "mother" their elder brothers. Even though he and Ramza had often disparaged their efforts, the girls had always done their best to take care of them. It seemed as if the slanting stone "ceiling" had wedged against something, preventing it from crushing him. His sister's body? Even in death had Tietra somehow managed to take care of her brother? Would she continue to watch over him? Half of him said that that was superstitious nonsense, but Gods, he still hoped she would.

_The necklace!_ Tietra's necklace, that had been their mother's; priceless to them but worthless to anyone else - he'd had it in his hand. There was no way to judge time in that absolute darkness, but it felt like a very long time before he found it. He put it around his neck for safekeeping.

He realised that tears were running down his face and dripping from his chin. He vowed he'd have his revenge, and to do that he had to get out of here alive! He could cry later; right now he had to survive. He supposed that crying would only make him dehydrate quicker, so he had to stop. He was becoming increasingly convinced that Ramza, even if he wanted to, would not just be able to dig Delita out, besides, Ramza probably already assumed he was dead.

He slumped against one of the walls. This was hopeless, wasn't it? He was going to die a horrible death.

His sword hilt was rubbing painfully against one of his worst burns and as he shifted it, he thought darkly _so much for becoming a Holy Knight_. Weren't Holy Sword techniques meant to be amongst the strongest? If he'd only found out three years ago, when he should have, and had trained in the skills, could he have used them, now, to break these rocks that penned him in? That might have ended with the rubble shifting and him crushed to death, but even a quick death was surely better than what awaited him now.

They were innate, those skills, weren't they? From what Ramza had said, you were given guidance to perfect them, but could he, somehow, still access his gift to get himself out, without that? If desperation alone could do it, he was certain it would work. He was definitely starting to feel the panic that had been oddly absent in him earlier

What did he know about Holy Sword techniques? Damnably little. _Ajora's arse! _He'd spent half his time at school reading, why had he never bothered to read anything on sword techniques? After racking his brains, he suddenly realised that he'd seen, and felt, Wiegraf Folles using them a couple of days before. One had involved ice, hadn't it? He remembered a feeling of cold, then a huge crystal of ice had formed around him, shattering moments later and doing him some serious damage in the process. Hopefully it could also damage stone as well. He remembered what the energy enfolding him had felt like - now he had to work out how to do that himself.

He had also seen those two treacherous duplicitous Beoulve bastards, Zalbaag and Dycedarg, using sword techniques, that one time, and that day he'd had the leisure to study what they did. Like Wiegraf, they'd just made gestures with their swords and... stuff had happened. Damn it, why hadn't he ever tried to find out more? He desperately tried to remember anything he might have read in passing about how this actually worked and drew a blank. Shrugging hopelessly, he unsheathed his sword and concentrated very hard on the idea of ice, then, turning to face the place where the draught had come from, gestured with his sword. Nothing. He tried again, this time trying with all his might to project _ice_ at the wall. Was he imagining it, or had he felt something that time, a tiny flicker of cold?

Taking a deep breath and trying to mentally prepare himself to concentrate even harder, he decided he'd just keep trying until it worked or he was dead. Unless Ramza really did come and somehow get him out, he really had no other alternative.

* * *

_Beoulve Mansion, Eagrose, two days later, in the early evening._

**Alma:**

Lying on her back, staring up at the canopy of the bed she had shared with Tietra for years, Alma ignored the knocking on her bedroom door. Her eyes were itchy and a little sore from all the tears she had shed in the last couple of days and she just wanted everybody and everything to leave her alone.

Two days ago, Dycedarg had summoned her to his study, on her return from school, and had informed her, in a sympathetic tone – sympathetic for him – that Zalbaag had not been able to save Tietra; that she'd been killed, on the previous day, when the army had stormed the Corpse Brigade's final stronghold. That Zalbaag had done his best but had been unable to save Tietra. Dycedarg had also said that she wasn't to speak of it to Zal; that Zal was distraught at his failure.

Zal had certainly seemed upset and, so far, he hadn't dealt with the situation well. After she'd left Dycedarg, she'd felt that whatever he said that she _must _speak to Zalbaag, but when she tried, she discovered that he'd already shut himself away in the library and, according to his concerned manservant, was systematically emptying all five decanters, on his own. The next day he hadn't been seen at all, staying in his rooms. Alma, likewise, had stayed in hers, refusing to get up for school, though without Zal's undoubted hangover.

Yesterday, halfway through the morning, she'd again been summoned to Dycedarg's study again, this time to be informed that he had just received a report that Delita had also died... somehow – Dycedarg had been vague. She had done her best to accept that quietly and had excused herself quickly. In the last couple of years she had gained a sense that Dycedarg was not always happy with her having the same level of affection for Delita as she did for Ramza and Tietra.

Perhaps he had worried about a scandal or a mésalliance – which was ridiculous. Nevertheless, something inside her has instinctively stopped her from incurring Dycedarg's disapproval, on top of everything else - she couldn't have borne a lecture - though she'd never know how she had managed it. So she had done her best to hide her horrified, redoubled grief in front of Dycedarg and managed to get almost back to her rooms before she broke down completely.

The knock on her bedroom door came again, and again she ignored it. The door opened a little and her maid poked her head through the opening. Alma thought about quickly shutting her eyes and pretending to be asleep, but instead sat up. Her voice a little croaky, she said:

"Jaane, if you are here to deliver another summons to my Lord brother, so that this time, he can tell me that Ramza's dead, you can just go away again! I can't cope with that too!" Her voice shook and cracked, especially on her brother's name.

"I'm not, Miss, I mean, My Lady. Time's getting on, so I wanted to know if you would be wanting to dress for dinner."

"Dinner?" Alma sounded, even to herself, as if she had never even heard of such a meal. "No Jaane, no thank-you."

"Shall I bring you a tray up, then, My Lady?" Alma just shook her head.

"You must eat, Miss... My Lady."

"I'm not hungry." The maid looked as if she would object, then sighed slightly and began to back out of the door.

"Jaane, just one moment. I know what I just said, but do you know if there's been _any_ news of my brother? Ramza, I mean."

"I thought you would already know, Miss... My Lady – three of the young ladies who were here before – you know, the ones with Lord Ramza and Master Delita – were here this afternoon, just after luncheon. Lord Beoulve was up at the castle, but Lord Zalbaag spoke with them, even though he'd... he'd already had a few drinks.

"Only three, and without my brother? Do you know _anything_ more? I need to know what's happened to Ramza, Jaane." The maid bit her lip.

"The one who was missing was the young lady Master Delita seemed, er, fond of. Er... Miss Juliana, wasn't it?" Alma nodded impatiently. "I don't know why she wasn't here with the others, though. And I've no idea where Lord Ramza is."

"Anything else?" She asked.

"I... well, Miss, I probably shouldn't..."

"Oh for heaven's sake, just spit it out." Alma said testily.

"Joseph, the footman, he said that as the young ladies left the library, the tallest young lady turned round and actually shouted at Lord Zalbaag."

Alma frowned at the girl.

"Did Joseph hear what Hildegarde said?" She asked.

"He said that she said 'I hope you drink yourself to death, My Lord, though that's a better end than you deserve!' Then all three of them marched out, Miss... My Lady."

Alma frowned at Jaane, completely flummoxed. She tried to understand why Hildy would have said such a thing. She'd done it in public, too, so she'd wanted it to be overheard, presumably. What had happened? Where was Juliana? Far more importantly, what the hell had happened to Ramza?

If Zal had been drinking, again, she couldn't go to him right now, but come morning, she'd demand answers. Dycedarg wouldn't tell her what was going on, she felt certain, but Zalbaag wasn't normally a heavy drinker, so his hangover should be bad enough that he'd tell her anything she wanted to know, just to be rid of her.

* * *

A tearful, disgruntled Alma left her middle brother's apartments the next morning with only the most terse answers to her questions. Ramza was missing, but there was no reason to think him dead or even hurt. Zalbaag had no idea where he was and he told her sternly that, after their brother's gross insubordination, Zalbaag would be more than happy not to see Ramza for quite some time. With that, Alma had to try to be satisfied. It turned out that that was as much as Zalbaag would ever be prepared to say to her on the subject.

In desperation, Alma tried that afternoon to turn to Dycedarg for more information and was merely told, coldly, that he was not obliged to keep a child like her informed on any subject, and that she would oblige him by not mentioning Ramza's name again.

* * *

**Author's note:**

I mentioned, right at the start of these vignettes, that the reason that "the girls" exist is that I used four generic female squires in the play-through of FFT I was doing when I started writing these. So, when Juliana died at Ziekden Fortress in the game, I decided to carry that through to the vignettes. That happened after I had already randomly designated her as 'Delita's Love Interest' (though 'sex and fondness interest' would be more accurate) and I had set myself the 'challenge' that if any of the generics died for real, I'd write that in. That turned out to be a little annoying, as it seems a little clichéd that the "clingy-girlfriend" generic is the one who snuffs it and I didn't want her death to impinge on Delita's sorrow for Tietra – so I just wrote it so that it didn't. People's reactions to grief are sometimes a little odd to those not feeling the same thing, so hopefully, I can get away with Delita just feeling numb about her.

This epilogue was going to be even longer, as there was going to be a short Ramza PoV between Delita's and Alma's. Then I decided that writing four people in a similar disbelieving and grief-stricken frame of mind would just get tedious (you may, of course, now be thinking "What? Even _more_ tedious?") Plus, Ramza's wouldn't have 'said' anything astounding, he would have simply harped on about "can't believe Zalbaag would do that, can't even face him, can't believe Delita and Tietra are dead, shouldn't have abandoned the girls" etc. (The sentiments are all there, though in a different way, in "Just Another Sellsword" (click through to my profile to find it), anyway, so go and read that!)

Last note – "Ajora's arse" - teenagers swear, and they're likely to use far worse than the damns, bloody hells and similar that I've put in their mouths so far (but not when you're trying to keep things well within a T-rating!). Many of the most offensive swearwords, in societies that are extremely religious, are likely to involve being disrespectful about your god(s) or their representatives so I'm officially coining this one (and I should have done so much earlier, I guess). It's roughly equivalent in offensiveness to the f-word, hence Delita and Ramza, as nicely brought up young men, would never have used it in front of the girls, anyhow (of course, their not using it before now had nothing to do with me not having given it enough thought up until now, had it?) Delita, very probably condemned to die a slow painful death, as he believes he is, isn't likely to be merely thinking "damn it all to hell", however.

I have a few more things to say about the Vignettes as a whole (all four game-chapters' worth, I mean), but they would make this even more long-winded, so instead I'll just do a short Afterword, I think, and post that as the definitely, very last chapter of this at some time in the next couple of days.

* * *

**Edited 28/01/15:** I've just finished re-reading and correcting all of these vignettes for errors (since I never seem to pick up all of them on the proof-reads I do before and after I upload them, no matter now hard I try!) And I realised that I had a whole piece where Delita thought about knowing nothing about sword techniques really; only having the vaguest notion that one of the Holy Sword techniques was lightning based and trying to produce it from thin air. **I am so thick!** He's not only seen, but also been on the receiving end of a couple of Holy Sword techniques within the last few days; it's how he realised he was a Holy Knight in the first place and it was only the last vignette! (I don't even have the excuse of there having been a big gap in time between the two. If I remember rightly, this was published less than a week after #22) **Thick as two short planks, I am! ** So I made some (fairly minimal) changes so that, instead of it being Hallowed Bolt he tries to force himself to produce, he tries to reproduce Judgement Blade (which hopefully feels a lot more plausible, anyway!) Since it's the 'easiest' (i.e. cheapest in terms of JP) technique to learn it seems the most plausible to be able to reproduce himself anyway, and Wiegraf pretty much always has it at the windmill battle at Fovoham Windflats, so he's likely been on the receiving end, or felt it happen to one of the others. I don't think I've made any more glaringly idiotic errors in these, but if I have please, please leave a review or PM me and I'll make the correction (and add a huge thank-you in an edit like this one!)


	24. Afterword

**Afterword**

A few months back, as I was replaying FFT, I started jotting down some scenes/sketches, purely for my own amusement, set in the days following Delita's abduction of Princess Ovelia from Orbonne. They went with what seems to be the "traditional" route with longer canon FFT fics, beginning at that point, and following Ramza, Agrias et al. Then I read them back over and decided they weren't too bad and that I might actually try "publishing" them, so I went back and tidied them up a bit, to be ready for posting. Tidying up led to me adding an extra scene, between Delita and Ovelia, to each of the first few vignettes, for the few days they are together after he kidnaps her.

_Then_ I decided that it might be interesting, and a bit more original, to first write about Delita and his earlier relationship with Ramza, which is how I started writing the vignettes you've just finished reading. That may make what you've just read (assuming you actually had the patience to read all of my rambling little vignettes) the longest, originally unintended, "prologue" ever on this site (It's also why I hope that you'll forgive me the first few of these vignettes, which are probably not my best work. I really wasn't all that confident with exactly what I wanted to do with these, at first!)

I'm not a fan of original characters being shoehorned into fics that are sticking to canon story-lines (_run for your lives, it's Mary Sue!_), but Chapter 1 of the game requires Ramza to have a squad of generics, hence "the girls" had to come into being. However, Ramza has indeed "turned and walked away" from everything now, and even if the game doesn't have him leave them behind when he does that, he's not going to have them with him at any point in the future.

So now, if nothing else, I feel like I have a better feeling for who Ramza and Delita are, and what they were to each other before Tietra died. As a fringe benefit, I've also discovered who Alma is, which will help me immensely when she returns for a short while in Chapter 3. Now I just have to decide how to stop her stealing all the scenes she's in – she turned out to be surprisingly good at that!

Why I started writing this waffling afterword, was to say that I've actually written about half of the vignettes from Chapter 2 of the game (which will be published as a separate "story", like each game "Chapter", otherwise this would probably run to well over a hundred chapters, assuming I decide to include all the side quests to get the optional characters in Chapter 4 - and I like the optional characters, so that's almost certain.) So now I need to go back to those vignettes I wrote months ago and make sure that I'm happy with them and especially make sure that there are no glaring inconsistencies with this set. You can probably expect the first eight or ten vignettes from Chapter 2 to be posted in fairly rapid succession, though; since (hopefully) they really just need proof-reading and tweaking. (The first one's almost done, it should go up later today)

They're also more upbeat than the last few of these are – apart from Agrias being incredibly pissed off, (at Ramza, Ladd and life in general) until they manage to get the Princess back from Delita.

My thanks go to everyone who has already reviewed these (and anyone who adds a review in the future). I've tried to make corrections from criticism and apply any hints and tips about improving my writing style, where possible, but do keep them coming – I think I'm an semi-decent writer, but I'd never claim to be more than OK - I know I have vast room for improvement. I do respond whenever anyone reviews anything of mine (usually quickly, but I always do respond eventually).

If you've enjoyed reading these, think others would also like to as well and you think they deserve it, please don't forget to favourite it!

NB If you haven't already, the thing to do now is to go and read my one-shot, "Just Another Sellsword" (click through to my profile to find it). With Agrias, Alicia, Ladd, Lavian and Mustadio to introduce and flesh out in the second set of vignettes, it's easier on me if you read that short-story first as I used that to establish Ladd (who has an actual personality, unlike in some fanfics I've read). If you like it, you could maybe favourite it too... it's a decent short story... you'll like it... honest... no _really, _you will!


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